Volva

When Hesta returned to Dorm 403, she happened to run into Liz coming out of her room.

"You're back?"

"Yeah."

The moment they met, a complicated feeling surged up in both of them—each suddenly felt a subtle sense of betrayal toward the other, and they instinctively looked away.

Hesta headed toward her room. As she was opening the door, Liz suddenly called out to her.

"Your personal computer just got approved," Liz said softly. "When do you want to pick it up? Tonight or sometime tomorrow is fine."

Hesta thought for a moment. "Then... tonight?"

"Sure, I'll take you."

Along the way, Liz kept thinking about how to bring up the base's suspension of the investigation into Shawn. Yet even after they returned, she could not find a suitable opening. All she could do was watch Hesta carry her computer back into her room.

Her feelings were a complete mess. That afternoon, she had gone to see Valenti on Molly's advice, but Valenti had told her to come back in a few days. She remembered how, just the night before last, she had solemnly promised Hesta that she would protect her. Now, because of the citizens' march, she had no choice but to accept that the investigation had been suspended.

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

In another room, Hesta knew nothing about any of this. Once she got the computer, her attention was quickly captured by the portable black square device. Before long, using the basic operations she had learned over the past half month, she found the search page and typed in "Hekla Wasteland" with two fingers.

Aside from basic information about Hekla, most of the remaining results centered around the "Hekla Tragedy"—two years ago, the same year the Grangua brothers arrived at the base, a widespread Chelation Disease outbreak had erupted across the Hekla Wasteland.

As Chelated Beings continued to emerge, the wind over the wasteland became like Death's breath, bringing one killing after another.

It was also during the Hekla Tragedy that Quicksilver Needles first observed cooperative behavior among Chelated Beings. Though it was only a very primitive bait-and-ambush combination, such behavior had never appeared in previous observation records.

Also in the Hekla Wasteland, Quicksilver Needles observed a Chelated Being that survived for forty days—the longest previous survival time had never exceeded twenty-eight days.

All of this suggested that Chelated Beings might be capable of evolution, though no one yet understood what triggered it.

Hesta closed those pages and typed in "Hekla brothers."

Sure enough, just as Chiba had said, news related to the Grangua brothers immediately appeared. She browsed through it one item at a time and soon found the Deer Hunting Behavior Chiba had mentioned to her.

The debate lasted for more than two months. At the time, the incident sparked enormous controversy in Tanyi City. Many began to question: if the Quicksilver Needles were made up of wasteland survivors who were so inhuman and naturally cruel, how could the organization guarantee the reliability and integrity of its own ranks?

Many public figures also stepped forward to call on people not to judge children who had only just escaped a living hell by the moral standards of the Habitable Zone. Doing so, they said, was "the arrogance of civilization."

In the end, AHgAs's medical department and Tanyi City First Hospital jointly concluded that the "Hekla brothers," having experienced the wasteland tragedy, had developed acute PTSD symptoms, which was why they had done something so absurd.

Only then did the great debate surrounding the Deer Hunting Behavior truly come to an end.

Among all the reports, the Grangua brothers appeared in only one blurry photograph casually taken by a Tanyi City resident. Only then did Hesta truly believe that the base's claims about protecting new students were not empty words—even at the height of public outrage, they had not revealed the Hekla brothers' names or appearances to society.

Using a search engine for the first time left Hesta deeply shaken. It felt as if she had pushed open the door to a new world.

Compared with searching through documents and newspapers in the vast library, the engine's convenience was beyond imagination.

Out of curiosity, Hesta searched for Askia, the hometown Liz had mentioned to her the day before yesterday.

Like Hekla, after the first entry containing Askia's basic information, most of the remaining results concerned the "Askia Tragedy."

Then she typed in "District 4 Catra City," Turan's hometown, and the Sol Wasteland, Ligo's hometown. Everyone's experiences were so similar—after the basic introduction to a city or wasteland came entries for one tragedy or another.

Of those regions, only Catra City had originally been a Habitable Zone, so Quicksilver Needles intervened promptly after the first case of Chelation Disease appeared. Apart from the twenty-odd victims unfortunate enough to be killed directly by Chelated Beings, all 110,000 residents of the city remained safe.

Catra City had now been designated a quarantine zone for two years. After a period of isolation, all its former residents had relocated to other Habitable Zones and begun new lives.

As for the two wastelands of Askia and Hekla, both had ended in near-total annihilation.

AHgAs seemed to have been trying to establish warning systems for residents of wasteland regions as well, but the results appeared minimal. Whenever they discovered that a wasteland had been invaded by Chelation Disease, it was often already at the stage where patients were collectively erupting. The only thing Quicksilver Needles could do was search those living hells as best they could for anyone still alive, then bring them back to the Habitable Zones.

This was also where most new Quicksilver Needles came from.

All night, Hesta wandered through the details of this world. Then she suddenly remembered a name. With some doubt, she typed "Volva" into the search bar and clicked search.

Her expression slowly shifted from tense anticipation to calm—the search results were all about the female lead of a District 14 love story called Dagger and Sheath.

Hesta lowered her eyes, only then feeling somewhat tired. Glancing at the clock, she was startled to realize it was already past one in the morning.

She got up to wash up, then collapsed onto her bed and stared silently at the ceiling until she fell asleep.

Sunday morning, Class D trainees' observation area.

When Calvin woke up, he found that Shawn had actually risen early for once—he was slouched crookedly at the small table in the observation room, with the occasional sound of turning pages drifting over.

The sun rose in the west, Calvin thought. He got up, greeted Shawn, then headed for the bathroom.

"Karl, let me borrow your computer later," Shawn suddenly said.

"No." Calvin answered cleanly.

"Fine, I won't use it. Just search something for me," Shawn said, lazily turning his head. "That works, right?"

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

"A name." Shawn looked at him. "Volva."