Chapter 56: Annihilation

"Why do I remember this so clearly? Because back then, everyone was condemning the incident and demanding an explanation from the municipal hall."

Liz raised her head, gazing at the thin strip of sky visible between the treetops, where a bright stream of light shone into her eyes.

"And then?"

"The mother of the two children fainted several times from overwhelming grief and had to be sent home to recuperate. Considering that both elderly grandparents had worked in the East District in their youth and were very familiar with Askia, they stayed behind in their small apartment in the city to pursue the legal proceedings. Their son escorted his wife home to arrange the children's funerals and take a temporary leave of absence.

"A few weeks later, the elderly couple's home in the town accidentally caught fire, and the entire courtyard was reduced to ashes. The old couple's daughter-in-law died inside, while the son survived, but his leg was shattered by a falling doorframe."

"Who did it?" Hesta asked.

"There were many theories, but as for the truth... nobody knows."

Hesta furrowed her brow slightly. "And then?"

"You can hardly imagine how furious the entire East District was at the time, because the matter was agonizingly cruel. Everyone took to the streets, demanding justice for the old couple's family. Among all the rumors, the most widespread one was that the official's son had orchestrated the whole thing to teach the family a lesson. Yet, it was precisely at this moment that the two elderly people dropped the lawsuit."

"Why was that? Were they really that afraid?"

"People didn't understand it back then. However, public prosecution had already been initiated; even if the elderly couple withdrew their complaint, the trial would still proceed. I remember one evening at the dinner table, my father talked about this topic with us. He said that the truth would eventually come to light, it was just a matter of time.

"If this were in a habitable zone, with surveillance cameras along all the major roads, seeking verification would have been easy from the start—but there is no electricity in the wasteland. All we could do was extract skin tissue from the children's fingernails, send couriers on fast horses to the habitable zone, and compare it with the suspect's DNA.

"For more than a month, everyone was waiting for news from the habitable zone. No one disturbed the elderly couple who kept their doors tightly shut. After all, having suffered such a tragedy, plunged into extreme despair and sorrow, and unwilling to step outside, was entirely reasonable."

"Later, word came from the habitable zone, and the verification matched—the murderer of the two children was indeed the official's son. So the elderly couple entrusted an intermediary to deliver a message: they wanted no compensation, only the immediate execution of the death penalty. But at that time, the Askia government hesitated."

"Why?"

"Because Askia had always wanted to join the Third District Habitable Zone, but the Third District United Government had an ironclad rule for all habitable zones under its jurisdiction: capital punishment could not be executed for any crime. Prior to that, although Askia retained the death penalty in its legal code, it hadn't actually carried it out in over twenty years... If the death penalty were executed this time, it would be... extremely detrimental to its future accession to the habitable zone.

"The trial continued, but everyone understood that the final outcome would likely be a massive fine, coupled with hundreds of years in prison without the possibility of parole.

"Everyone was outraged by this. The area in front of the municipal hall was swarmed with protesting residents, but the crowd was quickly dispersed—because a new and bizarre phenomenon arose in Askia. People began disappearing suddenly every day. No one knew where they went; they were neither seen alive nor dead. This was unprecedented in Askia... Panic instantly gripped the people, and no one dared to venture outside blindly anymore.

"In reality, however, all these missing people had been locked away in the basement of the elderly couple's apartment."

"The elderly couple... were they infected?" Hesta guessed.

Liz nodded.

"The reason they dropped the lawsuit earlier was because of this. The old woman's hands were already beginning to chelatize back then, and she wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway," Liz said softly. "The couple fell ill and transformed into chelates almost simultaneously. I suppose their original intention was revenge, but they didn't know that once a person falls ill, they abandon not only their loved ones, but all hatred... leaving behind no purpose other than committing evil for amusement.

"Askia had undergone a comprehensive overhaul for chelating disease prevention over fifty years ago. At that time, to maintain contact with the habitable zone in case of emergency, Askia had prepared three sets of plans. The first two relied on radio communications—one powered by storage batteries, the other by diesel generators. Every summer, the habitable zone would dispatch specialists to replace the batteries, check the generators, diesel reserves, and communication equipment.

"The third plan was particularly painstaking—they laid a heavily concealed underground communication line. Even if all power generation facilities failed during an emergency, this wired communication would still ensure that the habitable zone was informed of any danger in Askia at the very first moment.

"All three plans had been kept under strict confidentiality during their design because every chelate retains most of their pre-mortem knowledge, skills, and habits. Therefore, whether it's the Quicksilver Needles or the United Government, when educating the public about chelating disease, they always focus on disease prevention and self-recognition, rarely mentioning these higher-level defensive measures, lest some primary chelates use such public information to carry out targeted sabotage against anti-epidemic facilities."

Liz paused slightly.

"However, nobody expected that the couple, as urban planners, had participated in that engineering project from beginning to end."

"Were all the communication facilities... destroyed?"

"Yes..." Liz nodded. "Originally, both sides should have noticed something was wrong very quickly, because according to regulations, Askia and the habitable zone were supposed to check whether the wired communication remained normal every morning and evening—a routine that, however monotonous, had been maintained for decades. But unfortunately, among the people the elderly couple had abducted and imprisoned in their basement, two were specialists in charge of communications.

"At that time, the entirety of Askia was like a boiling cauldron, and the municipal hall threw itself into chaos. Because internal security had been handled so well, the temporary replacements assigned to the communications posts had not been informed of the existence of the underground communication line. Meanwhile, the official in charge at the Third District United Government was incompetent and guilty of severe dereliction of duty—despite Askia losing contact for days, he failed to report upward and simply punched in for work as usual.

"It wasn't until the eve of the chelate tide that Quicksilver Needles realized something was wrong... but by then, it was already too late."

"Quicksilver Needles... how did they notice?"

"During the renovation back then, the Quicksilver Needles team involved in the project left behind a final line of defense—they installed four chelate decoy devices outside the city. The bait was a special pheromone, similar to the scent of newly awakened Quicksilver Needles, which only a tiny fraction of chelates with exceptional physical attributes could detect.

"When these chelates tracked the scent and destroyed the entire device, the nearest AHgAs workstation would receive an alert.

"These devices, from R&D, design, to production and installation, were completed entirely by AHgAs independently. They had notified no one else, which was why these facilities... survived until the very end."