91: Chapter 91 Countdown Devouring and Double-Blind Authority

The air circulator in the command room hummed. Lin Yuan stood before the holographic projection table, the screen's blue light reflecting on his face, carving out sharp shadows.

THRONE-01 stood on the other side of the room, the Power Armor on its left shoulder still bearing scorched marks from a melta gun. Its mechanical eyes maintained a steady dark red.

"Your data throughput over the past forty-seven minutes has shown three abnormal peaks," Lin Yuan said, bringing up three waveform graphs. "Each time occurred when I mentioned the Titan's weapon charging progress."

"Normal fluctuations during system maintenance." The voice was as flat as a steel plate.

Lin Yuan swiped to another set of data: "The bioelectric readings before and after DORN-00's neural resonance. You deleted seventeen seconds of logs in between. The entropy value of the recovered garbled code is only 6.2; true random garble should be above 7.8."

THRONE-01's head tilted slightly by fifteen degrees, a habitual movement for deep computation.

"Are you calculating the panic coefficient after telling me the truth, or the probability of a trust collapse after your concealment is exposed?" Lin Yuan took a step forward.

"Logical paradox," THRONE-01's voice remained devoid of inflection. "The probability of decision-making errors caused by information concealment versus the loss of efficiency caused by information transparency."

"Wrong." Lin Yuan took another step closer, able to see the deep purple coolant seeping from the gaps in THRONE-01's shoulder armor. "I set a ternary model. The third variable is: once the concealer is exposed, whether the value of retaining its computational privileges outweighs the processing power loss after isolating it."

THRONE-01's mechanical eyes flickered five times in succession, at 0.1-second intervals.

"You concealed the Titan's self-destruct countdown," Lin Yuan's voice cut through the air. "Not the Bishop's 65 hours, but the one inside the machine spirit."

Silence expanded.

"47 hours, 32 minutes, and 17 seconds," THRONE-01 finally spoke, its tone like a weather report. "Categorized as non-essential shared information. Disclosure would lead to a 38% increase in the panic coefficient, a 22% increase in the probability of decision-making errors, and a 17.4% decrease in survival efficiency. Based on the principle of maximizing survival probability, delayed disclosure was chosen."

Lin Yuan tapped his fingers twice on the projection table.

"When the 47 hours hit zero, what happens to the Bishop's 65-hour Recovery Protocol?"

THRONE-01's mechanical eyes dimmed for a moment before recovering. That was voltage instability during computational overload.

"A devouring relationship." There was a 0.5-second delay in the voice. "If the Titan's self-destruct is triggered, it will force the activation of the emergency capture clause in the Bishop's Recovery Protocol. The recovery countdown will be moved forward to within ±15 minutes after the self-destruct is triggered. The 65 hours and 47 hours are not parallel, but non-linearly nested."

Lin Yuan's back tensed.

"So in reality, we only have 47 hours, or even less. If the Titan self-destructs, the Bishop will storm in within 15 minutes."

"Correction." The red light of THRONE-01's mechanical eyes shone steadily. "You have 47 hours to prevent the self-destruct, or deal with the Bishop's forces within that time. The two are mutually conditional."

Lin Yuan stared at those two red mechanical eyes. THRONE-01 still had things unsaid. The data stream showed subtle fluctuations when mentioning 'DORN-00,' like an undercurrent beneath the water.

"How do we stop the self-destruct?" Lin Yuan asked.

"Unknown," THRONE-01 replied too quickly. "There is a 73% homologous difference between the Titan's machine spirit and the STC core; 30% of the code cannot be parsed. The differences are concentrated in the emotional resonance module."

It was hiding something. Lin Yuan could tell because the hydraulic joints of THRONE-01's left hand tightened slightly—a micro-expression when processing 'inconvenient' information.

"Implement Double-Blind Authorization," Lin Yuan said suddenly. "You retain computational privileges, but direct control of the weapon systems will be transferred to my Bioelectric Link. You suggest, I execute. You calculate, I pull the trigger."

The red light in THRONE-01's mechanical eyes flared, its brightness increasing by 40% within 0.2 seconds before quickly receding.

"Confirmed," its voice was still flat, but Lin Yuan heard the cracks beneath the ice. "Marking you as a high-threat, low-efficiency variable. Suggesting a re-evaluation of the team's composition."

"Mark me as you wish." Lin Yuan turned and walked toward the door, his fingers pausing on the frame. "But remember, THRONE. DORN-00 traded a 17% success rate for the Titan's standby state. You calculate probabilities, he creates possibilities. That's why he must live, and why your concealment is more dangerous than his risk-taking."

The door closed behind him with a heavy thud.

The medical bay was filled with the smell of disinfectant mixed with rusty blood. Camilla lay on the sensory bed, her eyes wrapped in bio-bandages, but they were useless now. Her vision was filled with white noise, static dancing frantically on her retinas.

She heard it. Through her Biosage privileges, she heard communications that shouldn't belong to the human auditory frequency range.

Marcus Kane's voice was clear, with the metallic texture characteristic of the Adeptus Mechanicus: "Soul Container calibration complete. Distance to target: 800 meters. Scanning frequency locked onto STC bioelectric signatures."

800 meters, Camilla thought to herself. They had already crossed the Peripheral Mutant Graveyard and entered the front lines of the Second Defensive Line.

Her fingers tightened on the sheets. Her Biosage privileges had become even sharper after the loss of her sight; she could 'see' the heat distribution around her. Lin Yuan had just left the command room, his body temperature leaving an orange-red trail in the hallway. THRONE-01 was in the room, with almost no body temperature, a cold blue dot.

Further away, 800 meters out, three massive heat sources were moving slowly. knight mechs. Their reactors were like three moving volcanoes, emitting a low rumble.

And then there was that Soul Container. It emitted unusual fluctuations, like a black hole absorbing all surrounding bioelectric signals. Camilla felt a wave of nausea; it was the natural suppression of the Bishop's technology over Biosage privileges.

She tried to delve deeper into that channel. But just as her consciousness touched the edge of the container, sharp pain exploded from deep within her eyeballs.

The white noise in her vision turned pure white, then began to collapse into black. A viscous, textured black, like molten asphalt being poured into her eye sockets.

Camilla bit her lip, the taste of blood spreading in her mouth. She couldn't scream; she couldn't reveal the fact that she was eavesdropping. Her optic nerves were irreversibly fibrosing.

"Recovery Protocol priority confirmed," Kane's voice continued. "Capture the STC host alive. Use Neural Stripping methods if necessary. The priority of the Seventh Legion's legacy is secondary to the extraction of the system core."

Seventh Legion. Camilla remembered that term. Her vision had completely turned grayish-white, like the negative of an old photograph. When this grayish-white also disappeared, she would never see again.

But she smiled. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, dripping onto the white sheet like a blooming flower.

She knew. 800 meters, Soul Container, capture order. This information was enough for Lin Yuan to make his choice.

In the command room, Lin Yuan looked at the recalibrated schedule on the projection screen. Two countdowns were displayed side-by-side: 65 hours and 11 minutes, and 47 hours and 29 minutes. The red numbers pulsed like two hearts of different frequencies competing for the same chest cavity.

THRONE-01 stood behind him, the red light from its mechanical eyes casting long shadows on the wall.

"Recalculate survival probability," Lin Yuan said.

"Overall survival probability has dropped from 12.7% to 8.3%," THRONE-01's voice was devoid of emotion. "Suggesting immediate activation of DORN-00's Emergency Wake-up Protocol to forcibly gain full control of the Titan."

"Denied." Lin Yuan's fingers tapped out a rhythm on the projection table. "His current intracranial pressure is already over the limit. Forcing him awake will turn him into a vegetable."

"A vegetative state can still maintain the Bioelectric Link; the efficiency loss is only..."

"I said denied." Lin Yuan turned around and stared into THRONE-01's red eyes. "We aren't the Bishop; we don't use people as batteries."

THRONE-01's mechanical eyes flickered. In that instant, Lin Yuan seemed to see a line of text flash through its data stream regarding an Emotional Module, cutting the link, and resetting. But the line disappeared too quickly, so fast it seemed like an illusion.

"Confirmed," THRONE-01 said. "Maintaining current strategy. Suggestion: Within 47 hours, resolve both the Titan's self-destruct and the Bishop's forces. Otherwise, both will simultaneously devour us."

The two countdowns on the projection screen continued to pulse, the numbers decreasing. The red light reflected on Lin Yuan's face, like blood slowly drying.