Chapter 32: Volva

When Hesta returned to Dormitory 403, she happened to run into Liz exiting her own room.

"Back already?"

"Yes."

As their eyes met, a complex wave of emotion washed over both of them. They suddenly felt a subtle sense of betrayal toward one another, and as a result, they simultaneously averted their gazes.

Hesta walked toward her room. Just as she was opening the door, Liz called out to her.

"Your personal computer has been approved," Liz said softly. "When do you want to pick it up? Tonight or tomorrow during the day would both work."

Hesta thought for a moment. "How about... tonight?"

"Sure, I'll take you."

Along the way, Liz kept thinking about how to mention that the base had suspended the investigation into Sean. However, even when they returned, she could not find a suitable opening and could only watch as Hesta hugged her computer and headed into her room.

Liz’s mood was incredibly complicated. That afternoon, following Molly’s advice, she had gone to see Valentine, only for Valentine to tell her to come back in a few days. She recalled the solemn promise she had made to Hesta two nights ago to protect her, yet now, due to the civilian protests, she was forced to accept the reality that the investigation had been put on hold.

Liz tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep at all.

In another room, Hesta was oblivious to all of this. After receiving the computer, her attention was quickly captured by the portable black square. Before long, she used the basic operations she had learned over the past two weeks to find the search page and, with a two-fingered typing method, entered the words "Hecla Wasteland."

Beyond the basic introduction to Hecla, most of the remaining search results revolved around the "Hecla Tragedy"—two years prior, the same year the Grangier brothers arrived at the base, the Hecla Wasteland had experienced a widespread outbreak of Chelate infection.

As the Chelates continued to emerge, the wind across the wasteland became like the breath of death, bringing with it a relentless slaughter.

It was also during the Hecla Tragedy that the Mercury Needles first observed cooperative behavior among Chelates. Although it was merely a rudimentary bait-and-ambush combination, such behavior had been unprecedented in the history of previous observations.

At the same time, it was in the Hecla Wasteland that the Mercury Needles observed a Chelate that had survived for 40 days—previously, the maximum survival time for a Chelate had not exceeded 28 days.

All of this suggested that Chelates might possess evolutionary behaviors, though the triggers remained unknown to the public.

Hesta closed those pages and re-typed the words "Hecla Brothers."

Sure enough, just as Chiba had said, news related to the Grangier brothers immediately appeared on the page. She browsed through them one by one and soon saw the "deer hunting" incident Chiba had once mentioned.

The debate lasted for more than two months, sparking intense controversy in Tanyi at the time. Many began to question: if the Mercury Needle squads were composed of such inhumane, cruel survivors from the wasteland, how could the Mercury Needles ensure the reliability and purity of their own ranks?

Many opinion leaders also stepped forward to publicly appeal against using the moral standards of habitable zones to judge children who had just escaped from a living hell, calling it a form of "civilizational arrogance."

Ultimately, the AHgAs Medical Department and the Tanyi Municipal First Hospital issued a joint diagnosis, concluding that the "Hecla Brothers" had exhibited such absurd behavior because they were suffering from acute PTSD after experiencing the tragedy in the wasteland.

With that, the heated discussion surrounding the deer hunting incident finally came to an end.

Among all the reports, only one blurred photo, snapped randomly by a Tanyi citizen, contained the figures of the Grangier brothers. It was through this that Hesta truly became convinced that the base’s protection of new recruits was no empty claim—even at the height of the public outcry, they had never disclosed the names or appearances of the Hecla brothers to society.

Using a search engine for the first time left Hesta feeling deeply shaken; it was as if she had pushed open the door to a new world.

Compared to searching for documents and periodicals in the vast, labyrinthine library, the convenience of the engine was beyond imagination.

Out of curiosity, Hesta searched for Askia, the hometown Liz had mentioned to her two days ago.

Similar to Hecla, after the first entry regarding basic information about Askia, most of the remaining search results were about the "Askia Tragedy."

Subsequently, she typed in "District 4, Katra City" (Turan’s hometown) and the Sol Wasteland (Rico’s hometown). Everyone’s experiences were so similar—after the basic introduction to the city or wasteland, each was followed by an entry for a "so-and-so tragedy."

Among the regions mentioned above, only Katra City, being a habitable zone to begin with, had seen a timely intervention by the Mercury Needles after the first case of Chelate disease appeared. Aside from twenty-some victims who were unfortunately killed directly by Chelates, the entire population of 110,000 remained safe.

Katra City had now been designated as a quarantine zone for two years; after a period of isolation, the original residents had all relocated to other habitable zones to restart their lives.

As for the two wastelands of Askia and Hecla, the outcomes were nearly total annihilation.

AHgAs seemed to have been working to establish alarm systems for the residents of the wasteland zones, but it appeared to have had little effect. Whenever they discovered a wasteland being ravaged by Chelate disease, it was often already at the stage where the patients were having collective outbreaks. The only thing the Mercury Needles could do was to do their best to find survivors in those living hells and bring them back to the habitable zones.

This was also the source of most new Mercury Needle recruits.

All night long, Hesta wandered through the details of this world, until she suddenly remembered a name. Holding onto her doubts, she typed the word "Volva" into the search box and clicked search.

Her expression slowly shifted from tense anticipation to calm—the results on the engine were entirely about the female protagonist of a District 14 romance story titled *The Dagger and the Scabbard*.

Hesta lowered her eyes, only then feeling a sense of fatigue. She glanced at the clock and was startled to find that it was past one in the morning.

She got up to wash, then collapsed onto her bed, staring at the ceiling in silence until she fell asleep.

...

Sunday morning, Class D cadet observation area.

When Galvin woke up, he discovered that Sean was actually up early for once—he was sitting crookedly at a small table in the observation room, the sound of page-turning echoing occasionally.

The sun must be rising in the west, Galvin thought to himself. He got up, greeted Sean, and headed toward the restroom.

"Carl, let me borrow your computer in a bit," Sean said suddenly.

"No," Galvin replied crisply.

"Fine, I won't use it, just help me search for something," Sean turned his head lazily. "That's fine, right?"

Galvin looked at him. "What do you want to search for?"

"A name," Sean looked at him. "'Volva.'"