Eh? Do you also want to try the iron fist of the humanoid girl?

The interview took longer than I had imagined. When I came out of the reception room after the interview, the bright sky was covered with dark clouds, and the sun's radiance was only a glimmer of afterglow at the boundary between the sky and the earth in the distance.

Reporter Louis, accompanied by the foreign press officer, went to stay at the guesthouse at the headquarters.

Raphael stayed: she wanted to use this quiet time to finish the things that she didn't have time to do normally.

She found a quiet, empty office and spent the first two hours reading various military reports, some of which were truly necessary, but others seemed redundant to Raphael and were merely required by the original, peacetime custom of various red tape.

When all these are almost done, I will imitate Director Harry's handwriting and fill in his name at the end.

After sending off the red tape caused by the procedure, Raphael sat down to do a long-pending task that had troubled her - replying to the letters sent to the victims on behalf of the director.

This was also the director's job, but he bought her free time for a few days in exchange for a stay-out permit and two keys.

More and more people are dying. In addition to routine research, DARPA also has to send chemical defense personnel to the contaminated area to collect samples. Not only researchers, but also a team to escort them.

Harry also became increasingly busy, so Raphael took on the difficult responsibility of writing the letters.

Asuka pushed the door open, glanced at the mountains of information in the room, and tacitly cleared out a space to help Raphael deal with these things.

Anyone who does this kind of work would want to delay it as long as possible, so as not to let his relatives know the bad news. And if possible, they would usually write it as simply as possible, which is always very annoying.

This may seem like compassion, but in reality it is only a wish to avoid the sorrow of others, to try not to touch it, lest one also become miserable.

But what needs to be written still needs to be written. The death notice is not just an electronically printed template, but also letters to comfort the families of the deceased. Some deceased personnel also have living wills, specifying who should be the person to notify their casualty assistance.

Some people also hoped that his family would not be informed of his death and that they could just write a reply letter on his behalf.

They said that someone would write back to tell them "I'm fine", but in the end a soldier or official with military photos on his head and dressed very formally and solemnly would come to his door to deliver the letter and distribute the pension.

What should he write? In this case, Raphael always knew that he could only reply with one sentence: He was killed in XXX place. It would be too cruel to reply to the expectations of the families of the fallen soldiers with such dry and pale words.

Raphael thought about this as if he was writing it for the first time. But what else could he write about?

She remembered the photo clipped in the file. The sergeant named "Rex Gladstone" was lying on the ground with a pale face and a field backpack under his head.

This human security guard was part of the first team sent by DARPA to the West Coast to investigate the collapsed liquid crystal cells.

Later, they fought against the mutated ELID infected people and were torn to pieces on the first day.

Before this, Raphael knew very little about him. To Raphael, he was just a security officer in charge of the research bureau headquarters, one of those many people, and he was still safe at that time.

Raphael was used to this situation, used to war, and she just said to herself: There was a soldier named "Rex" who died while on a mission.

It was easy for her.

But to the young man and his family, these words—"He was killed"—were a tragedy and the loss of all hope.

After hearing this, the wife is no longer called a wife, but a widow, and the children are no longer simply called children, they may be shamed as having no father.

This is not just a passing pain, it is a complete transformation of life and entire future.

Therefore, when Raphael wrote this kind of thing, she would polish it appropriately, for fear that people who read the text would think that she, the writer, was in a very relaxed mood.

People sometimes needed lies, she knew that. They must have hoped that the person they loved had died a heroic death, or as it was written - a heroic death.

They hoped that he did not die in obscurity, that he had done something important and then died, and they certainly hoped that he would remember them before he died.

Raphael would polish it up, try to write some based on the mission records, and tell some lies.

She tore a sheet of paper from her notepad and began to write in her cursive handwriting, which was as precise as a printer's.

She imitated the apology letter Harry had written in the past, saying that he and Rex had served together for so long, and wrote about how Rex had died heroically here, in the battle escorting the investigation team.

How Rex shot and killed three mutated ELID creatures with his own hands before he fell - even though this was not true, how he died in "his own" arms, how he remembered his son before he died and asked him to tell him to remember his father.

After writing the letter of comfort, Raphael put the death notice and the letter into an envelope together. After confirming that there were no problems with the transferred information, she put the letter and other documents into the file bag.

After finishing this, Raphael picked up a photo in front of her and looked at it before putting it in the file bag.

This photo should have been taken in the past, right in front of the former DARPA headquarters building.

Sergeant Rex, who is not very tall, stood straight with one hand on his pistol holster, looking majestic. This must be the look the photographer insisted on.

After confirming that there was no problem with the information on the handover documents, Raphael sealed the relevant documents about Sergeant "Rex Gladstone" into a file bag and placed it properly in the storage basket.

The documents in that storage basket will be collected and mailed by special personnel at 1730: in the afternoon.

At this point, Sergeant Rex's life was over.

Compared to her slow progress, Fei Niao had already finished writing the third person's death information and was processing the other party's security WeChat. Although the handwriting and font were exactly the same, the wording was obviously much stronger.

She faithfully recorded the few words left behind by the fallen soldiers before their death, without any embellishment or lies, which can only be described as "true".

Asuka only knew that the soldier she wrote about was killed in battle, but she didn't know under what circumstances he died, so she didn't waste any words on it.

Chapter 169: Bitter Winter

"Lingyin, what have you been doing?"

Fei Niao dropped his pen and quietly watched Raphael's every move.

"Take in our new home."

"I won't live in the dormitory anymore."

"Ah."

Asuka smiled faintly when she heard Raphael's affirmative answer. There was nothing wrong with the dormitories assigned by DARPA, they were all in the form of apartments.

Although there are three people living in a double room, this is a subsidy generated by limited accommodation conditions, and they can get an additional allowance of US$320 per month, tax-free.

"How many death notices and letters of comfort do we have to write?" Asuka asked.

"I don't know. There are new confirmations of casualties and missing persons every day." Raphael tried to calm the waves in his heart, but the complicated emotions still lingered in his heart for a while.

She scratched her hair, making a "Woo~Woo~" sound, and words that sounded like an interface emerged in her mind.

"That's all for today." Raphael stood up and said.

"Back to where?"

"To the new home."

……

The evacuation operation in North America ultimately turned into a disaster - state governments with ulterior motives, green zone residents who rejected survivors, legal and procedural evacuations, incitement by people with ulterior motives and planned crimes ultimately turned a rescue and evacuation operation on the West Coast into a riot.

What finally calmed the situation was a brutal plan led by the Pentagon. A 2300-kilometer "new border" stretched from Port Arthur in the south to Winnipeg in the north, preventing the survivors on the west coast from entering the Green Zone in an unorderly manner.

Until the new North American wall was completed, not many lucky people were able to enter the safe zone.

At the same time in Europe, the number of refugees entering Europe for asylum after the Nobufuyama incident has increased, making the already tight social resources of various countries even more scarce due to the emergence of refugees.

What's worse is that as conflicts between local residents and refugees become increasingly fierce, vicious criminals have begun to emerge among the refugees who have nothing to do in the refugee camps.

The refugees entering the EU region mainly come from the indirect victims of the Nobuoyama incident, including Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East.

After the refugees, whose culture, religion and other customs are completely different from those of the EU, entered Western Europe, in addition to causing considerable conflicts, rumors about who caused the Nobufuyama incident also spread among the refugee camps, which to a certain extent exacerbated the refugees' hostility towards Europe.

As refugee crimes and accusations gradually escalated from theft and robbery to more serious crimes such as personal injury and sexual assault, European public opinion also shifted from overall support for accepting refugees to banning refugees from entering. Even so, by the third quarter of 2030, about 600 million refugees had entered the EU through various channels.

Eventually, anti-refugee demonstrations broke out in various EU countries, protesting against the EU government's acceptance of Asian refugees in the Nobufuyama incident.

Although these protests were gradually suppressed, the supply of materials in the refugee camps is still in short supply and cannot be delivered in time.

I don’t know if it was because Mount Nobuo was completely lifted into the sky, but a large amount of rocks turned into dust due to the destructive force of the explosion and rushed directly into the stratosphere.

Photos taken from space by the European Space Agency showed that the strong shock wave of the explosion expanded rapidly. In just tens of minutes, a large cloud of dark dust emerged over the western Pacific Ocean, with a momentum far exceeding that of the tropical cyclone in the South Pacific.

Such a huge amount of dust enters the stratosphere and is affected by the stratospheric wind direction, causing the dust to flow together with the rising collapse fluid.

Dust of this magnitude entering the stratosphere is bound to lead to a weakening of the ground's absorption of solar radiation, just as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 caused the ground to receive 10% less solar radiation than usual, which does have a significant impact on the global climate.

It is now December, and the climate in North America is much colder than usual.

Several snowstorms blew down, forcing Raphael, Lingyin and Fei Niao to fight against the thick ice and snow that completely blocked the two floors of the house before going out every morning, and the situation in Europe was similar.

In North America and Europe, refugees lacking heating fuel suffered devastating consequences.

After the snow melted and spring came in 31 years, statistics revealed the truth about the refugees' suffering. About 100 million people froze to death during the 30-year winter, and about 200 million people were forced to undergo amputation surgery.

In the hospitals run by Doctors Without Borders, the largest number of patients received every day are frostbite patients. Due to the lack of sufficient manpower and resources, these volunteers can only take the most tiring and labor-saving methods to deal with them.

They will only provide correct treatment to those with mild frostbite, and the rest can only undergo amputation surgery, because only in this way can the hospital accept as many patients as possible.

Hell on earth is nothing more than this.

The slogan of win-win cooperation has completely become a self-deceiving lie this winter. In the face of disaster, the most primitive nature of human beings is exposed.

This is not simply blaming the politicians who prevent refugees from passing through the wall - the refugees and politicians who enter the country under the pretext of refugee status and start doing evil and defending them should also be blamed.

On this day, the Philadelphia police received a report of a suicide.

Redel Albert Roxart, a British man of German descent, a famous vestigeologist, archaeologist, sociologist, author, humanitarian, former director of the United Nations Monuments Agency, a man who had been engaged in heritage disaster management for many years, committed suicide at home.

No one cares why he died, because everyone cares more about the fact that he died at this time.

……

It has been half a year since Raphael moved out of the DARPA dormitory. Sitting on the terrace on the third floor, enjoying the cool spring breeze blowing towards him, his heart filled with a pleasant sense of relaxation.

This is the feeling a person has when, after living an uneasy life for a long time, the feeling of danger turns into a relatively safe feeling.

They happened to be talking about this during lunch.

"Isn't it true that the feeling of danger and possible death is, frankly, a torturous feeling, one that wears people down?"

"It's true," Raphael affirmed.

"We also feel tired?" Lingyin didn't quite believe it. She looked at her arms and legs, which were obviously very strong.

“For us, it’s psychologically exhausting.”

Asuka continued, "Just like a deep diver, as he sinks deeper, the pressure increases all the time. It's the same here, the danger increases gradually, and the habit of it also grows.

People often don't realize that the danger is not always this great. When a soldier runs into a trench after the attack begins, he thinks the trench is safe;

When I enter the next selected bunker, I will also feel that this is a safe fortress... After getting used to this environment, even if a volley of bullets is about to hit our window, it is still a safe place for us.

Is that my interpretation correct?"

"Yes, of course it's right." Raphael agreed, "But after leaving the war zone, I almost don't feel the danger. Even though I can hear gunshots and shrill sirens every day."

After dinner, she changed into casual clothes and said before leaving the house, "I'm going to the bureau to talk to Harry."

"What to talk about?"

"Work."

Chapter 170 Winter Storm

"Don't fall behind, follow closely!"

The lieutenant platoon leader who was leading the team gently reined in the warhorse under his crotch and looked up at the sky. The clouds in the sky were thicker than before, blocking the originally bright moon.

The night wind whistled in my face, and the chirping of various insects in the wild disappeared completely. All signs indicated that a thunderstorm was about to come.

The platoon leader, Lieutenant, turned his head and urged the patrol team members following behind to move forward.

There were more than 30 people in their group, among whom there were only a few veterans, and the vast majority were recruits.

If horses were not needed for mountain patrols, the war horses under their crotch would be replaced with Tiger reconnaissance vehicles.

This night's patrol mission was a training exercise to help the new recruits familiarize themselves with the complex border environment. During this period, the Red Army had been making more moves, and the higher-ups had issued an order to strengthen alert the day before yesterday.

Although the war has not yet arrived, the soldiers on the border can intuitively feel the depressing atmosphere.

They couldn't understand why it turned out like this.

Was the Kremlin at fault for its handling of the crisis?

The 79-year-old emperor gave a nearly perfect answer. The military offensive by the five Eastern European countries, the war in the South Caucasus, and the severe pollution in Siberia caused by the Shinobuyama incident were all properly handled under his military and political skills.

Compared to those countries that can be said to be destroyed, their situation is already very good.

But the damn oligarchs turned these things into means of attack, instigating large-scale demonstrations in Moscow to protest the signing of the Berlin Energy Agreement.

The agreement preliminarily stipulates that a considerable amount of natural gas and food will be supplied to the EU at preferential prices in the next five years, on the condition that the EU permanently withdraws its combat troops from Poland and the three Baltic countries and stops deploying any form of strategic interception system in the Czech Republic.

After the agreement was signed, the Russians delivered the first batch of grain to the EU as agreed in early March. However, a group of Green Party and liberal politicians in Brussels used the excuse that Russian hackers had obtained internal documents of the European Commission to obstruct payment and claimed that the grain and food were of substandard quality and could not be distributed to the victims.