Chapter 844 The Spy (Part 2)
Instinct alertness made Ariana stop, but the sound disappeared, or she could no longer hear it.
Is it an auditory hallucination?
After a while, she felt it turned into a voice that kept scratching her in her memory.
You are about to make a mistake.
Ariana shook her head. She wanted to put this away, so she quickened her pace, and the voice did not continue to appear.
But after walking less than a hundred meters, she suddenly stopped, then turned around and entered a small maintenance room.
One of her scout droids sent her a warning, and an image of a hallway filled her vision.
It looked deserted, except for one figure standing there alone, a giant, motionless, staring up at her robot.
The scarlet eyepiece stared into her eyes. The giant wore silver-gray power armor, the standard painting of the Astral Knight, but his shoulder armor and waist had some additional leather-like coverings, and His visor is also depicted as resembling a skull, but he is clearly not a priest.
Although they were far apart, Ariana could feel that the other party was staring at her so deeply and unblinkingly.
Then he laughed, a light, but harsh laugh, like the screech of some predator.
“Be careful, assassin.”
He said softly:
“There are only so many places to hide, and those places that seem safe may not be so.”
Then he held out his hand, and the image turned into snowflakes.
Ariana felt that the reconnaissance robot was destroyed, and the shock shocked her, which delayed the routine for a few seconds before starting.
Data: Its own existence has been exposed.
She took an inventory of her reconnaissance robots in an instant and found that all the remaining ones were still in place and working normally.
Inference: The subject making contact was attempting to cause psychological intimidation.
She started switching between scouting robots here and there, and after the third one she started uncovering information.
What remained in her sight by carving, smearing or chalking was a symbol: one of the special communication symbols of the Temple of Callidus, meaning death.
The assassin had to pause for a moment before processing these facts. She had been subconsciously monitoring the marked hideouts, but she did not see anything.
Inference: The enemy is not trying to intimidate, the enemy is trying to show their sophistication and superiority.
She noticed her breathing, noticed the cramped maintenance room she was huddled in, noticed everything, and noticed she was shaking.
"You are making a mistake."
Her throat made a sound involuntarily, and then she realized that she had just spoken loudly.
No, no, not now, she thought, and then suddenly her consciousness tumbled out of her control.
Ariana had been warned of this, they had all been warned, even a Callidus mind could only take in so much data for so long before it will start to block and fail.
Extended task states and overly complex work areas will lead to confusion in the mind running on the self-imposed path.
For months, Arianna has been living in an extremely complex working area.
Request: "List your own psychological characteristics."
She was saying these words out loud, she couldn't control it, her mentor's old face was grinning at her from the memory Then, she shot out a series of questions and answers that she had not yet started, unable to control herself. Answer: "Known psychological characteristics include a mixed sense of superiority/inferiority, the combination of which manifests itself in complex psychotic behavior tending to make one's superior position known to enemies and/or allies."
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For some reason, she found that her mentor's face seemed to be changing, turning into another unfamiliar face.
Amber skin, eyes full of aura, and facial features full of power——
Requirement: “Make consistent inferences between recent records, this data, and previous mission data.”
Inference: "The target already knows I'm here, they want me to know their situation, they want me to know how powerful they are, and they want me to know before they kill me."
About her The memory of her mentor's cruel smile came back, right in front of her eyes, but it wasn't her mentor.
That was another stranger.
Ariana was shaking, her muscles aching from the effort to twist, even as her mind was clearing.
Soon, the assassin thought he had emerged from the trance.
The critical period has passed, but she is still intact, still alive, still functioning.
She began to touch her reconnaissance network again, cautiously at first, and then took them back into her consciousness one by one.
She has lost time, and time is a fatal factor in a working area.
The assassin looks through his own eyes again and cuts back to the one following the patrol as they move towards the lift.
These people were the last obstacle between her and the armory. She had about five minutes left.
Her brain did a quick check to reassure herself that her actions would not be fatal, then decided to change the situation she was looking at.
Stillness is the key to concealment, one of the first lessons taught in the Assassin's Temple.
But there is another strategy, which is to keep moving to prevent yourself from getting locked out.
She is being hunted and must survive if she is to complete her mission.
So she decided not to take the aisles, but to move through the tiny air ducts, which were choked with wiring harnesses and tubes, where the dust and dirt told their own story - about how no one before her had ever been there. Pass here.
What’s more important is that there are no scary giants here.
The content transmitted from the reconnaissance robots forming the cordon showed no problems. The air temperature, noise levels and vibrations were all stable at background levels.
Everything is quiet.
Here, huddled in a space that was too small for even children to approach her, Ariana waited, processing various intelligence and clues in her divided consciousness.
Ariana directly ordered the two reconnaissance robots to enter the adjacent operation room of the armory, and then drilled in through the ventilation duct to check the situation inside.
As she expected, there was only one mechanical priest, a few servants of the Astral Knights Chapter and a dozen servitors inside.
She has been discovered. According to the regulations, she needs to change her image immediately. This priest of the Mechanicus is a good candidate.
So she started to move, along the ventilation duct to the top of the cabin, and then took a deep breath.
The next moment, she kicked open the vent grille with all her strength. The metal scream of broken hinges sounded, and death came suddenly.
(End of this chapter)