Chapter 1961 - 1960: Pursuit

"So that’s where we’re at now." Under the dim streetlights, the glow fell across everyone’s cheeks as the bespectacled young man looked around at them and spoke hoarsely. "We’ve already been stamped with the label of ’K Believers’. Even if nothing else happens this time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will keep investigating and monitoring us, and there’s a real chance we’ll get arrested again as ’K Believers’."

"But if we go, we’ll really become ’K Believers’. And that guy who suddenly showed up doesn’t exactly look like a good person, he’s not necessarily trustworthy either." The short, chubby youth said quickly. "Besides, my family’s here."

"It’s fine. Anyone who wants to stay can stay, and staying doesn’t necessarily mean something bad will happen." The bespectacled youth rasped. "We don’t have much time."

His gaze swept over everyone. "Who wants to go with me?"

"I’ll go." A voice rang out; it was the young man in workwear lying on the machine.

"I’ll go too." The blond youth said hoarsely.

"I’ll go." The young man in casual clothes spoke.

The short, chubby youth opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end didn’t.

The bespectacled youth waited for a while. No one else spoke up.

"All right then. We’re leaving." He nodded, and together with the other two helped the workwear youth up into the vehicle.

As they got in, the off-road vehicle started up by itself and drove into the depths of the night.

"Holy shit, the car moves on its own?" The blond youth’s eyes widened. "What kind of high tech is this?"

"It’s autonomous driving. It’s been around for ages." The bespectacled youth turned back to look at the dim streetlights and the friends beneath them watching their departure.

"That advanced?" The blond youth couldn’t help blurting out. He looked ahead. "Looks like there’s another car up there, with people in it too?"

"My parents are both dead. Nothing tying me down." The casual-clothes youth sitting in the back glanced at the workwear youth beside him. "This guy’s definitely lost his job, no money for treatment. If he doesn’t go, he’s just waiting to die."

He looked at the blond youth. "His mom died early, and his dad’s a drunk, total scumbag."

He turned his head toward the bespectacled youth. "Why are you going?"

"My parents don’t just have me." The bespectacled youth pulled his gaze back, paused, watching the stream of lights outside the window, and said softly, "I want to go see for myself."

——

Keskein Airport · Flight Control Room

Bam——

The tightly shut door was suddenly shoved open, and a figure drenched in blood rushed inside.

The staffer sitting at the console froze for a moment, then hurriedly stood up, staring in confusion at the blood-soaked figure. "Who are you? What are you doing?"

He Ao glanced at him, strode quickly to the console, and yanked out the data connection cable.

"You can’t touch that!" Seeing this, the staffer quickly reached out a hand.

He Ao looked at him, raised his hand, and ripped off part of the dried blood scab on his face, just enough to reveal his features. "I’m Vice President Bod. I’m taking control of your control room."

"What do you mean?" The staffer was stunned. "What Vice President?"

He watched He Ao plug the data cable into his wristband, hesitating. "By regulation, you’re not allowed to use that."

"Go get your supervisor. He can talk to me." He Ao said directly.

The staffer seemed to have been waiting for that line. He grabbed the intercom beside him. "Boss, you need to get over here, fast. There’s someone claiming to be the Vice President who wants to hook into the system."

And while he was speaking, Eve had already breached the airport’s defense systems.

Keskein was a very marginal small city, and the airport’s throughput wasn’t high. The whole airport had been bought out by Note Intelligence roughly thirty years ago, but they’d never invested in any renovations.

The system was the same old one from back then, with no upgrades or updates. It was obvious Note Intelligence didn’t want to spend a cent here.

Very soon, dense streams of data were pulled out of the airport system.

From that Dream Weaver’s memory, you could piece together that those ’Life Church’ people were in a serious hurry; everything had to be done as fast as possible.

They were so pressed for time they couldn’t even wait for the Dream Weaver to kill Bod and take the daughter along with him; they had to take the daughter first.

That showed they were truly under severe time pressure. Since they were grabbing even that little bit of time, it was unlikely they’d choose a long overland route. They were probably using air transport.

And Keskein had only this one small airport; the takeoffs of airships and planes could all be traced.

But if He Ao went through normal procedures to request their cooperation, by the time everything was done, a new assassination team would probably already have arrived.

So He Ao simply chose a slightly more forceful method.

Right now his wife Alina was in that unmanned off-road vehicle, heading toward the South Gate together with the car carrying the bespectacled youth and his friends.

He Ao had Eve find a Doctor and a snakehead on the black market. The Doctor would treat the injured youths’ wounds, and the snakehead would find a way to arrange a caravan to smuggle them to the East.

Alina’s wristband was still intact. Eve had hacked into the Exoskeleton Armor the Secret Service Bureau had left in the car and merged the two sets of armor into one, able to control Alina’s body.

He Ao had implanted a subroutine of Eve into it. In the city, Eve could monitor Alina’s condition and alert He Ao in time, but once they were out in the wilderness, Eve would lose connection. So He Ao needed a living person beside her to help "watch over" Alina’s condition.

The bespectacled youth was the one he’d chosen. Simple-minded, pure-hearted, and he wanted to go East.

He placed a marker on the bespectacled youth and arranged for them to head toward the East.

The reason he went to such trouble to send Alina away was actually very simple.

He Ao watched the flight records and surveillance logs that Eve was rapidly organizing on his wristband. He needed to find his daughter and follow the trail to figure out what this ’Life Church’ was really up to.

He couldn’t stay by his wife’s side through her entire recovery.

Ding——

With a soft chime, a photo of a Floating Warplane popped up from He Ao’s wristband.

From the surveillance footage and flight records, the operators of this warplane were all wearing long white hooded robes, their faces and bodies Hidden beneath the hoods.

They’d arrived in Keskein roughly in the late morning and left toward evening, around the time Bod had just come back.

He Ao pulled up the footage of them inside the airport. Through a video from a side angle, you could see that one of the hooded figures seemed to be holding a sleeping child in their arms.

It should be this Floating Warplane.

He Ao quickly retrieved the relevant information on the Floating Warplane.

This Floating Warplane had loaded liquid batteries at the airport and recharged.

These warplanes all had short endurance; even on a full charge, they could only fly between a few nearby cities at most.

He Ao quickly checked the declared destination of the Floating Warplane: "Vissen."

Vissen was not close to Keskein, but if this warplane pushed its battery to the limit, it could possibly make it there.

Vissen was an important commercial node, packed with people and eyes everywhere. Once they arrived, they could quickly switch transportation and get out—it was an excellent transit hub.

He Ao pulled out the data cable.

They needed a faster warplane to chase them.

He Ao raised his head, his gaze passing through the control room’s floor-to-ceiling windows, looking at the scattered airships on the outer airport.

And at the very center of the airport, that one massive warplane parked there.

By the time the staff who’d been on the phone looked up again, there was no one in front of him anymore.

······

Dim lights shone over the wide apron. The large aircraft’s door was wide open. A man in a captain’s uniform was inside the cabin, checking the onboard facilities.

A tall woman, seemingly the chief purser, stood at his side, following him as he inspected the cabin’s amenities.

"With your position now," the woman reached out, opened the powered wine cabinet, checked the neatly arranged red wine inside, and said in a low voice, "you could completely have the copilot or other staff do the checks. There’s no need to come personally."

"Back when I was serving in the Central Army," the captain glanced at the woman and smiled, "I was always thinking about how to slack off. Every time I finished a flight, I’d throw the plane into the hangar and leave it to the maintenance crew, then run off. My squad leader scolded me many times, and I never listened—until one time..."

He raised his hand and checked the safety equipment above his head. "My plane stalled in midair. I almost died there. Luckily I had good luck and good skills, managed to save the aircraft and fly it back. And in the final inspection, guess what they found?"

"What was it?" The woman asked with some curiosity.

"A single screw hadn’t been tightened, which caused the entire flight system to short out. The guy in charge of maintaining my plane had been pulling several all-nighters, his mind already a bit foggy," the captain withdrew his gaze and sighed. "Granted, there were flaws in the Evis Spatial System’s design too, but ever since then, I personally double-check every critical structure."

"But that’s exhausting." The woman sighed. "You’re basically adding tons of overtime for no reason."

"Better than having an accident," the captain smiled. "Aren’t you pulling overtime here too?"

"I don’t have a choice." The woman sighed. "Mr. Bod will only stay here for one night at most and leave early tomorrow. You know how picky he is. I have to prepare his change of clothes, his favorite wine, backup meals in advance. If something goes wrong, I’ll be out there sending résumés again."

"Honestly, Mr. Bod counts as one of the better ones. For minor issues he usually doesn’t say anything. Only when it’s something major, or something he’s emphasized repeatedly, does he get angry." Hearing this, the captain smiled. "You haven’t seen..."

Here his tone paused, and he didn’t go on.

"Right, didn’t you used to fly the President’s special plane?" At that moment, the woman’s curiosity was clearly hooked, and she quickly pressed him.

"Skewis is not easy to serve," the captain sighed and glanced at the woman. "You’ve probably heard about it. We ran into turbulence up in Heaven, the plane shook, and a glass of red wine spilled onto his silk suit. After that, our entire crew was fired."

He opened another hatch and began checking the safety gear. "I’ve flown for so many years, and it’s only because Mr. Bod knows my skills are good that he hired me specially. Otherwise I’d already be unemployed now."

"With skills like yours, even if you weren’t here, you should have no trouble finding a job." The woman said, curious.

"It’s not that easy." The captain shook his head. "These days there are no jobs anywhere. Only the battlefield is short of people—but at my age, going to the front is just going there for the death benefits."

Hearing this, the woman fell silent for a moment, then sighed. "Now it’s war everywhere, people dying everywhere. Why do we have to fight wars?"

"Maybe because a lot of people can’t survive without war anymore," the captain exhaled lightly and walked into the cockpit, starting to check the instruments there. Then he saw the cockpit’s monitoring equipment, paused slightly, and raised his voice. "Look there—that figure—is that Mr. Bod?"

"What?" The woman quickly walked over and looked at the monitor. On the corridor not far from the plane, a somewhat blurry figure was striding quickly toward the aircraft. She spoke with some uncertainty, "It’s too dark and too fuzzy, but by the way he moves, it looks like Mr. Bod."

"Why would Mr. Bod be coming back alone?" The captain frowned slightly. "And the timing seems off."

The woman looked a bit lost.

Bang bang bang——

At that instant, fierce sounds suddenly rang out from outside.

"Is that... fireworks?" The woman froze.

"No, gunshots." The captain realized at once and looked toward the monitor.

On the screen, that figure walking out of the darkness suddenly sidestepped halfway through, as if dodging something.

"Mr. Bod is under attack." The captain straightened immediately, went back into the cabin, opened a hidden compartment, and took out a Gauss Rifle stored inside.

By now, the woman standing in the cabin was completely stunned, simply following the captain’s steps on instinct.

"Don’t follow. You’re not armed personnel." Seeing her movement, the captain shouted at once.

At the same time, he stopped at the cabin door, looked out into the dense darkness, and then froze there.

"What is it?" The woman still craned her neck to come over.

She didn’t dare stick her head out past the doorway, so she could only lean by the window, watching the hazy scene in the night outside.

The fierce gunfire was still going on, but seemed to have calmed down a lot.

"Look at those attackers—don’t they look like they’re from the Secret Service Bureau?" The captain paused and spoke hoarsely.

"Huh?" The woman stared, then put both hands around her eyes to block the light, pressing her face to the window, watching the figures moving in the night outside. "Judging by the uniforms, they kind of do. What is that supposed to mean? Secret Service agents who are supposed to protect the Vice President are assassinating the Vice President?"

The captain fell silent in an instant. "I’m afraid it’s not the Secret Service Bureau trying to kill Bod."

Bang——

Soon, the gunfire outside the window grew sporadic. One corpse after another fell into the pitch-black night.

A figure passed through the darkness and stepped into the light beside the plane.

He raised his head, looking at the massive aircraft parked there, at the light shining from inside its cabin.

He slowly lifted his feet and walked toward the stairs under the cabin door.

A figure suddenly jumped out of the darkness and fired a shot at him.

Bang——

He raised his hand and caught the incoming bullet, then casually flicked it back over his shoulder.

The bullet passed through the attacker’s brow, carrying the attacker’s body backward to topple, crashing onto the concrete.

Throughout the entire process, the man’s stride never once paused.

The brilliant lights shone on his body, revealing a face covered in scars and streaked with fresh blood.