Instinctive 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 get rid of this, 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 abandoned, save for a single figure standing there, a giant, motionless, staring up at her robot.
The scarlet eyepiece stared into her eyes. The giant wore silver-gray power armor, the standard paint of the Astral Knight, but his shoulder armor and waist had some leather-like coverings, and his faceplate was also covered with
It is depicted as something similar to a skull, but he is obviously not a priest.
Although they were far apart, Ariana could feel that the other person was staring at her so deeply and unblinkingly.
Then he laughed, a soft, but harsh laugh, like the screech of some kind of predator.
"Look out, assassin."
He said softly:
"There are only so many places to hide, and those places that seem safe may not be so."
Then he stretched 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 to uncover information.
What remained in her sight, written, painted or chalked, 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 she began to process these facts. She had been subconsciously monitoring the marked hiding places, but she did not see anything.
Inference: The enemy is not trying to intimidate, but is trying to show his 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 very loudly.
No, no, not now, she thought, and suddenly her consciousness tumbled out of her control.
Ariana had been warned of this, they had all been warned, that even a Callidus mind could only take in so much data for so long before it began to clog and fail.
Expanded task states and overly complex work areas can lead to confusion in the mind running on the self-imposed path.
For months, Arianna has been living in an extremely complex working area.
Requirement: "List your own psychological characteristics."
She was saying these words out loud, and she couldn't control it. Her mentor's old face was grinning at her from the memory, and she was shooting out a series of questions and answers that she hadn't started yet, and she couldn't 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."
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, facial features full of power——
Requirement: "Conduct consistent inferences between recent records and this data as well as data from past missions."
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."
The memory of her mentor's cruel smile came back, right in front of her eyes, but it wasn't her mentor.
That's another stranger.
Ariana was shaking, her muscles aching from trying to twist, even as her mind was clearing.
Soon, the assassin thought he had escaped 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 toward the elevator.
These people were the last obstacle between her and the armory, and she had about five minutes left.
Her brain did a quick check to ensure 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 she 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 dust and grime told their own story—that no one had been here before her.
More importantly, there are no scary giants here.
Feedback from the reconnaissance robots forming the cordon showed no problems, with air temperature, noise levels and vibrations 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 split consciousness.
Arianna directly ordered two reconnaissance robots to enter the adjacent operation room of the armory, 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 pipe 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.