Why it never ends

Chapter 1195 Tracking
Hershta made up some other things to appease Victoria's questions, and both of them looked very grim—if this virus had already appeared in District 14 last year, what is the infection situation in District 14 now?
“The body was replaced, which means that District 14 knew about it, but they deliberately suppressed it…” Victoria murmured. “This is absurd. No, I have to report this now—you didn’t report it, did you?”

Hersta shook his head.

This time, Victoria walked quickly, and Hester immediately followed: "...It seems like there hasn't been an outbreak of chelation disease in District 14 for the past two years—"

"That's exactly what's terrible!"

……

In Emmanuela city, Boheng sat alone at a small table in a street-side café, idly watching the crowds coming and going.

Logically, he wasn't supposed to visit Eunice and Gahodore at Hershta's farm until next Wednesday, but he'd been quite tense these past few days. Before parting ways with Hershta last time, she'd ambiguously hinted that if he didn't send more Kasyapas, she'd have to find another Southern District organization to cooperate with—Boheng had been losing sleep over this, secretly keeping an eye on news in the area, worried he might actually hear that Hershta had formed a new partnership with someone else.

While Kasyapa is indeed precious, she is hardly a unique resource. If we lose her exclusivity in order to bargain with Hershtar, it would truly be a losing proposition.

However, Boheng still had a gut feeling that he didn't believe Hersta could find reliable reinforcements so quickly in this place she was completely unfamiliar with. On the one hand, she wasn't a local, and many armed groups here were hostile to Mercury Needle. Moreover, he and Hersta had lived together for a time, and this trust... couldn't it withstand a little test?
Thinking of this, Boheng felt inexplicably annoyed.

Just yesterday, he received news that a Mercury Needle team seemed to have appeared in the southern coastal city of Little Brumma today. This city is hot and humid all year round, with a thin fog that never dissipates. In addition, it was heavily polluted before the Great Power Outage, so it was not included in the habitable areas of District Twelve. This is one of the few places on this continent that is not protected by AHgAs because it is not habitable.

Few people from the north or central regions travel to Little Bruma. There's really nothing there to attract outsiders, whether it's Mercury Needle or anyone else. They go there for only one thing—to make contact with the Bruma Control Army.

Boheng tried to investigate, but he didn't get any information about the batch of mercury needles. All he knew was that these people had arrived in Emmanuela, the northern heart of District Twelve, today.

Clearly, this was a follow-up visit.

To make Eunice and Gahodorei's identities more credible, Boheng did not grant them the authority to contact him immediately. However, this also meant that he could not currently ascertain Hershta's location—was she still at the palace? Or had she truly entered the city and arrived in Emmania?

Boheng had mixed feelings.

Perhaps all these years have passed, and Hester has changed. Perhaps camaraderie has become insignificant to her now, and after being corrupted by the AHgAs organization, she has become a woman driven by self-interest.

These thoughts caused Boheng a subtle pain; he felt he had lost something he had never possessed. However, he was unwilling to fully believe it all, so he could only relive the various scenes of his interactions with Hershta over and over in his mind.

In this state of mind, he realized that he seemed to have placed too much trust in this old friend… a trust that she simply could not bear. Boheng held the clear glass, gently rotating it in his palm, observing the patterns on the glass with a blank expression, while a voice filled with slight resentment murmured repeatedly in his heart:

I have been let down.

Although this idea hadn't been tested, he felt he should start thinking about how to adjust his strategy towards Hersta. For the past few months, he seemed to have been blinded by a filter based on childhood friendship; even now, a faint voice in his heart still spoke up for Hersta—perhaps she had her reasons? Perhaps she had no choice…

But since we parted ways last time, she hasn't contacted me even once. Is that reasonable?

This is simply incomprehensible...

Boheng took a deep breath, glanced at the street corner with a hint of resentment, and immediately became alert—those fleeting thoughts had almost made him miss his target for the day.

At that moment, a familiar face appeared on the street corner. It was Vera, a new technocrat from the Military Security Bureau's review department, controlled by Bruma, a woman in her early thirties known as the "Algorithm Major."

In Boheng's eyes, she wasn't a proper major, because the entire Bruma Control Army was just a third-rate local armed force, and it was impossible for her to have such a proper military rank. The title was simply because Vera often wore a uniform of the Twelfth District Government Army to various occasions, with a gold star and gold stripes on her shoulder insignia.

Technocrats like Vera don't get along with the old guard who control the military. The name "Algorithm Major" is itself a mockery of her. In her early twenties, she went to study in the First and Third Districts and picked up some of the habits of the elites. As a result, she was always ostracized by the controlling military and huddled in Little Bruma.

Boheng felt a sense of foreboding. A woman like Vera could indeed be persuaded by Hershta to cooperate. After all, if internal support was lacking, seeking external assistance was the only way out... But as far as he knew, the Bruma Control Army did not value Kasyapa's training as much as the devout youth did. They would directly recruit adult Kasyapas locally for training—soldiers recruited in this way were unlikely to be large in number and could not be considered loyal.

Boheng got up, left a five-ruble bill on the bill tray, and then followed.

Vera walked almost without hesitation, showing that this was not her first time here—she basically didn't need to look at road signs or identify landmarks around her to find her way.

Boheng dared not get too close, lest Vera discover him. At each street corner or entrance to an underground passage, he would wait until Vera's figure had almost disappeared before slightly increasing his speed to catch up.

The crowd around them gradually thinned out as Vera moved westward into the city. Boheng knew that area was a wealthy neighborhood with numerous detached mansions, upscale apartments, and clubs.

At a subway entrance, Vera suddenly stopped, looking around as if checking for anything unusual. Boheng stood at the entrance of a souvenir shop, pretending to be picking out postcards, while continuing to follow her out of the corner of his eye.

But just then, he heard a somewhat unfamiliar voice coming from inside the shop: "...Connor Gonza?"