Observer

From a seat away, Shawn watched Calvin work the mouse and keyboard, typing "Volva" into the search engine. They clicked through several webpages in succession, all of them reports related to performances of "Dagger and Sheath."

Shawn frowned. "Can you check the resident database at AHgAs?"

"You mean hack into it?" Calvin narrowed his eyes.

"...Uh." Shawn blinked, suddenly realizing that neither he nor Calvin had the necessary data access permissions. "Forget it."

"Is there anything else you want to look up?"

"Try 'Volva Duanming Alley'?"

Calvin was about to start typing when something occurred to him. "Is this another thing related to Hesta?"

"Ha, how could it be?" Shawn gave a helpless smile. "I'm just curious who this person is."

"Wait until Fletcher gives your computer back, then look it up yourself." Calvin closed the laptop. "I need to get ready for self-study."

Shawn did not respond. He remained seated as if nothing had happened, absently tugging at his hair as he pondered the search results from earlier.

Early that morning, as usual, he had opened Calvin's computer while Calvin was asleep and begun analyzing the data packets he had captured the night before.

A year ago, Shawn had planted an extremely well-hidden Trojan deep inside one of Calvin's folders. It was the first virus program he had ever written himself, and he had named it "Assassin."

It was small, consumed little system resources, and left no trace of use. Its sole purpose was to connect to and control the computer of Mrs. Lavette, the student dormitory supervisor—the machine Shawn truly controlled as his puppet.

Mrs. Lavette had never been particularly interested in information technology. Though she was diligent and responsible at work, she had no enthusiasm for gaining a deeper understanding of how computers worked. After a computer malfunction, Shawn had "kindly" cleaned up Mrs. Lavette's work computer. From then on, Shawn had his first—and most discreet—zombie machine.

To avoid being discovered, Shawn secretly performed regular maintenance on Mrs. Lavette's computer, preventing her from sending it in for repairs because it was running too slowly.

Mrs. Lavette, meanwhile, knew nothing of any of this.

Through the Lavette node, Shawn had captured plenty of interesting things. His favorite records to browse were everyone's search and browsing data—every person's searches and browsing habits offered a deep, truthful reflection of their recent life.

Take Lavette, for example. She often searched online for gardening and cooking, and everyone knew how much she loved both. But once, Shawn discovered that late on a Sunday night, she had searched, "What should I do if my arm gets punctured by a rusty nail?" He had assumed Mrs. Lavette had accidentally hurt herself, only to find the next day that she was perfectly unharmed while Mr. Weir had not come to work.

When Mr. Weir finally reappeared, there was a cotton bandage on his forearm. Shawn approached him out of concern and learned that Mr. Weir had specifically gone to the base hospital that morning for a tetanus shot.

That made Shawn realize that these two middle-aged people, married for many years, might have spent the previous Sunday night together.

There were many similar details. Shawn silently observed the activities of everyone in the student dormitory from the shadows. He had not told anyone about it, including Calvin.

He continued expanding his network of new footholds throughout the base. It did not require particularly advanced skills—he only needed to target ordinary people like Mrs. Lavette, people with no passion for technology. Apart from half a month ago, when he had rather aggressively stolen several faculty accounts to obtain information about Hesta and had quickly been discovered by Molly, he had almost never slipped up.

The second of only two exceptions came not long after he discovered that the base also had underground structures. At the time, he had been astonished by their precision and advanced design, as though they belonged to an entirely different era from the world above. So he began considering how to forge online identity verification and gain access authorization.

But Shawn quickly discovered that not only were the structures themselves unfamiliar, the technology used for underground communications was as well. Before he had even managed to do anything, he was caught after merely entering a command attempting to gain access.

That was also when his credit rating fell straight from A to C.

Even so, observing everyone around him still brought immense pleasure to Shawn's life. In the digitized world, he saw sides of many people here that no one else knew.

Flickering, densely packed streams of information slowly seeped into the lives of every human being living in the civilized world. Within them, Shawn saw trembling desire, fear, resentment... or longing.

In that respect, Tanyi City was no different from the Hekla Wasteland.

Originally, students were meant to begin studying computer technology in their second year at the base. But perhaps because most battles against Chelated Beings only required knowing how to use tools rather than understanding how they worked, many reserve members did not value the subject. Once they had muddled through the exams, they never pursued it further, leaving Shawn vast room to move about.

But there were exceptions—Liz Fletcher, for instance. After completing her third-year information security courses, she proactively upgraded her network communications with stronger encryption. Soon afterward, the other two girls in Room 403 did the same. Shawn was not sure whether Liz had done it for them, but it made him quietly steer clear of Liz.

That morning, he discovered that there was one more device in the student dormitory. Though it had no name, he quickly deduced that it had to be Hesta's newly issued computer.

Shawn glanced through Hesta's search history and saw that the first three searches were, respectively: "Hekla Wasteland," "Hekla Brothers," and "Hekla Tragedy."

At first, he froze. Then his brows rose.

Heh...

You want to learn about me too, Hesta?

If not for the concern that he might wake the sleeping Calvin, Shawn would have burst into laughter. He forcefully suppressed the surge in his heart and continued reading each entry. Though Hesta had later searched for Askia, Catra City, and the Sol Wasteland, that did nothing to diminish the subtly unsettled feeling within him.

Then, upon seeing the final search record, that feeling was briefly replaced by curiosity.

Volva.

First of all, this was definitely not someone from the base. The name did not even reveal whether the person was male or female, but since Hesta had searched for it, it had to carry some weight.

Shawn had originally intended to continue following this lead, but a burst of birdsong outside the window jolted him from his immersion like an alarm clock—daylight had fully broken, which meant Calvin would wake soon.

He quickly erased his traces and sat down at the desk. Sure enough, only a few minutes later, Calvin woke up.

"Get ready. You're coming to the library with me."

Calvin's voice abruptly broke Shawn's train of thought.

"Huh?" Shawn lifted one eyebrow. "Why do I have to go if you're the one doing self-study?"

"I can't leave you alone." Calvin answered. "Change your clothes and come with me."

Shawn could only get up and prepare while grumbling under his breath.

On the way to the library, Calvin sensed that Shawn's silence was somewhat unusual—he had not said a word the entire time and was clearly thinking about something.

In fact, Shawn had been mulling over the matter of "Volva" all along. Hesta's search journey had come to an abrupt end after that name. She had not even opened any of the result pages, which showed that none of the search results had contained the answer she wanted.

Then everything related to "Dagger and Sheath" could be temporarily ruled out.

Thanks to Xiao Yunyan for the monthly vote~!