The Pan-Dimensional Containment Initiative

Chapter 4: First exposure to cognitohazards

The noise on the screen is throbbing.

In the main control room of Site-CN-01, the only light source is the row of cold monitoring monitors. Gongsun Qizhe sat on a harsh metal chair, the black coffee in his hand already cold. He didn't drink, just rubbed the rim of the cup back and forth out of habit.

In the middle of the display is the first-person image transmitted back by Li Biao's handheld recorder.

The image swayed back and forth following Li Biao's breathing, and occasionally bumped violently.

The headphones were filled with the sound of wind and Li Biao's very low-pitched curses.

"Mom sells batches... This ghost place really only has books but no ghosts. It's so gloomy that I'm sweating even on my vest."

Gongsun Qizhe pressed the call button on the headset, and his voice was smooth and smooth, "D-114514, report your current location and environmental readings."

The screen shook violently. It was obvious that Li Biao was startled by the sudden sound.

"Supervisor! Scary people are going to scare people to death!" Li Biao lowered his voice, with an obvious tremor in his voice, "I am now under the collapsed outer wall of No. 7 Middle School. The sign in front says 'gas pipeline emergency repair, no entry'. But when I looked at the seal, it was still new, and it was not firmly attached."

"That's a disguise."

Gongsun Qizhe looked at the energy waveform diagram on another screen. The red peak is climbing up little by little, like an awakening beast slowly opening its mouth.

"Ignore the seal. Find a high place with a better view and set up the miniature camera you brought. Remember, your mission is to observe, not to be a hero."

Li Biao sniffed twice at the other end of the camera, "Hero? I'm a hero even though I'm acting like this. Do you think I look like a bear? As long as I don't risk my life here, I can kowtow to you."

The screen starts to move.

Li Biao climbed up an old locust tree next to the wall using his hands and feet. After the camera started spinning for a while, it finally stabilized and focused on the inside of the campus.

It was an old red brick building only three stories high.

library.

Even through the screen, Gongsun Qizhe could feel that there was an indescribable awkwardness about that building. The air around it seemed to be thicker than elsewhere, and the light from the street lamp seemed to have been swallowed by something, and the light dimmed several degrees.

"Supervisor, what do you think that is?"

Li Biao's voice suddenly became urgent.

The picture is enlarged.

On the overgrown playground in front of the library, several figures appeared.

They were wearing the blue and white uniforms of Haidu No. 7 Middle School and carrying schoolbags. There were four people in total, three men and one woman.

But the way they walk is very strange.

That awkwardness almost hit my face through the screen.

Their knees didn't bend at all, they just relied on their thighs to swing there, dragging their calves forward. The upper body was straight, and the two arms hung stiffly on both sides, not even swaying as he walked.

Like sleepwalking.

Or, like a puppet being pulled away by a few invisible strings.

"Turn on the gain to the maximum." Gongsun Qizhe ordered.

The screen flashed for a moment, and the image processed by the algorithm became clear.

Gongsun Qizhe saw their faces clearly.

All four students were laughing.

That's not a normal smile. The corners of his mouth were grinned in exactly the same arc, revealing a set of teeth that were too neat. His eyes were wide open, and the whites of his eyes glowed strangely in the darkness, without even blinking.

Their eyes were all fixed on one place - the closed black door of the old library.

"That's..." Li Biao swallowed on the branch of a tree, his voice trembling, "Are these melon seeds possessed by evil spirits? They don't sleep at night, and they still laugh when they come to such a ghost place? The laughter makes me feel scared."

Gongsun Qizhe ignored Li Biao's fear. He tapped his fingers on the keyboard and called up a set of data models.

[Deduction of brain wave characteristics of target group: deep hypnotic state]

[Current behavior pattern: guided by obsessive psychological suggestions]

[Suggestion: This is a typical early manifestation of cognitive hazards. That "thing" is sifting for prey. 】

"Don't make a sound." Gongsun Qizhe stared at the screen. "That is an unconscious behavior guided by a low-frequency signal. If you make a sound, they may regard you as the 'signal source'."

Li Biao immediately covered his mouth and even held back his breath.

The four students got closer and closer.

The leading boy has already reached the bottom of the steps. He mechanically raised his foot and stepped on the already cracked concrete steps to pieces.

Click.

The sound is crisp.

But the boy didn't seem to feel anything and continued to lift his other foot up.

The moment his hand was about to touch the rusty iron door -

Buzz-!

A very subtle, but extremely penetrating sound broke through the air and exploded suddenly.

The screen captured a flash of silver light.

The light was so fast, it was like it was cut directly from the darkness.

Immediately afterwards, the boy's body went limp like a kite with its string broken.

Before the other three students could even react, a figure emerged from the darkness.

It's a woman.

She was wearing a black tight-fitting combat uniform, but she casually wore a long windbreaker over it. The tall pony followed her movements and threw a sharp arc in the air.

The action is so clean.

Gongsun Qizhe's pupils shrank.

She didn't use any fancy moves. Just sprint, cut the back of the neck with a hand knife, turn around, and kick sideways.

Not a single superfluous movement.

Less than two seconds.

The three students who were still giggling were like bags of flour, lying limply on the ground.

Li Biao was dumbfounded, "Good boy... This girl is so fierce. Is she filming a movie? Is this the kind... that kind of martial arts master?"

Gongsun Qizhe said nothing. He was looking at the woman's equipment.

In her hand she held a strange-looking silver stick. When he put the student down just now, the short stick seemed to flash a blue light that was difficult to detect.

"That's a portable nerve blocker." Gongsun Qizhe whispered to himself, "This is not something that private cultivators can have. This level of craftsmanship... is official."

On the screen, the woman was half-kneeling on the ground. She skillfully opened a student's eyelids and took a look. Then she took out the short silver stick and shook it at the student's temple.

The student's body twitched, then became completely quiet, and his breathing became even.

She's doing emergency treatment.

Block the further spread of cognitive pollution.

This technique is beyond professional.

"Li Biao." Gongsun Qizhe suddenly spoke, speaking a little faster, "Pull your broken lens back a little. Don't get so close."

"Ah? Is it for Sazi?"

Li Biao was looking forward to it. This was much more exciting than the action movies he watched in the bureau. While he complained, he subconsciously adjusted the angle of the recorder, trying to get a clearer picture of the woman's face.

The lens focus is zoomed in.

In the picture, the woman's face is clear.

It was a very beautiful face, but it was so cold. His facial features were three-dimensional and he had no expression at all. He even knocked down four people without even breathing.

Just then.

The woman who was squatting on the ground suddenly stiffened.

There was no warning.

As if there were eyes on her back, she turned her head sharply, her gaze directed towards the old locust tree where Li Biao was hiding.

At that moment, the screen seemed to be stuck.

Those eyes.

Through the layers of electronic signals, across a distance of several kilometers, Gongsun Qizhe felt a chill on his back, as if he was being targeted by some ferocious beast.

There was no murderous look in his eyes.

There is only an absolutely rational examination. It's like looking at a garbled code that shouldn't appear in the program, or a white mouse that suddenly breaks into the laboratory.

Li Biao almost fell from the tree.

"Holy s**t!" He was so frightened that he cursed, "Can she see me? It's so dark and so far away, can she see me?!?!"

Gongsun Qizhe's reaction was much faster than his.

"Turn off the infrared light! Now!"

"Retreat! Don't hesitate, just get out of here!"

The moment the order was given, the woman on the screen had already stood up.

She put one hand on her cochlea, as if talking to someone, and the other hand was already touching her waist. Those bulging things there are definitely not for cosmetics.

Li Biao was completely panicked now.

Ten years of freedom and settlement expenses are not as important as my current life.

He hurriedly turned off the power of the recorder and slid down from the tree like a frightened monkey, rolling and crawling deeper into the alley.

"Uncle, please forgive me. I have an 80-year-old mother and an 8-year-old baby...I'm just a passerby!"

While running, this guy kept mumbling the life-saving lines he learned in short videos, hoping to give the non-existent pursuers some psychological hints.

In the main control room.

As soon as the recorder screen cut off, the screen turned into a snowflake.

Gongsun Qizhe did not move.

He was still in the same position, staring at the blacked out screen.

“Kujia...”

He recognized the face from the blurry screenshot.

There was no such person in the memory fragments of his previous life. This is a variable that belongs entirely to this world.

[Alert: New high-threat human individuals detected]

[Name: Unknown]

[Threat level: Presumed to be Beta level or above]

[Affiliated force: Presumed to be the local official anomaly management agency]

[Suggestion: Raise the defense level of Site-CN-01 to yellow alert]

The system's red pop-up window flashed wildly at the edge of his vision.

Gongsun Qizhe stretched out his hand and rubbed the center of his brow. There was finally some fluctuation in his originally calm eyes.

This isn't entirely a bad thing.

The intervention of official agencies shows that the order of this world is not so bad that it cannot be saved.

But it also means that the existence of him and the foundation will soon be put on the table.

To official agencies, an uncontrolled containment organization is often more of a threat than the anomaly itself.

"An interesting opponent."

Gongsun Qizhe turned his chair and faced the complicated map of Haidu City again.

He casually drew a red circle on the map at the location of Haidu No. 7 Middle School. Then there was a question mark next to the circle.

"Absolutely rational analysis..."

That look back just now, that instant locking intuition.

That's not what you see with your eyes.

That is "calculated" by logic.

If I guessed correctly, that woman's ability should be a talent that greatly enhances her intuition and data processing abilities.

Like a humanoid supercomputer.

This kind of person hates "accidents" the most.

They are also most likely to be attracted by "accidents".

Gongsun Qizhe turned on the headset again, and heard the sound of Li Biao's breathing and the sound of a car engine starting. This kid ran pretty fast and had already returned to the receiving car.

“D-114514。”

"Master... Supervisor." Li Biao's voice was still trembling, and the feeling of happiness about surviving the disaster was about to overflow the earphones, "I scared my ancestors to death. Is that woman a monster? I just exposed a little bit of the lens reflection, and she looked over."

"You did a great job."

This compliment stunned Li Biao. He thought he would be scolded again, or even silenced directly.

"Drive the car to safe house No. 3 in Area C, burn all the equipment, and come back in another car."

Gongsun Qizhe's tone returned to that cold calmness.

"Why do you need to burn equipment again? That recorder looks quite expensive..."

"Because if I were her," Gongsun Qizhe looked at the red circle, "I would have started tracking the tire tracks of that car and the electronic signal characteristics of that device."

There was silence on the other end of the earphone for a second.

This was followed by a louder "Mama sell batch" and the roar of the accelerator being stepped on to the bottom.

Gongsun Qizhe took off his headset and threw it on the table.

He stood up and walked to the huge floor-to-ceiling one-way glass in the main control room. Outside is the internal structure area of ​​Site-CN-01, where the robotic arm is quietly assembling the newly replaced air filter.

Everything is in order.

But Gongsun Qizhe knew that Ansheng's life was over.

"The water is deeper than I thought."

He took out the "Psychic Barrier Talisman" that he had always kept close to his body from his pocket, and rubbed his thumb back and forth over the complex lines on it.

The Euclid-class anomaly is still there.

The proliferation of cognitohazards continues. Although the woman just temporarily managed to deal with those students, she was only treating the symptoms and not the root cause.

As long as the source of the "Whispering Spirit" is not contained, the old library will always be like a black hole, constantly attracting such young and weak-willed souls.

Official agencies may have the ability to blockade it or even destroy it.

But they can't "take advantage" of it.

This is the purpose of the foundation.

We control, we contain, we protect.

Gongsun Qizhe turned around and looked at the balance of only a few dozen points on the system interface, as well as the gray [Junior Mobile Task Force] icon.

The corner of his mouth suddenly twitched, revealing a sneer.

"Since reason is your weapon, let me tell you an irrational story."

At this moment, the alarm light at the door flashed twice.

Li Biao is back.

He was sweating profusely, his clothes were torn several times by branches, and there was a bruise on his face, which he obviously got from getting off the tree.

He was holding the remains of the metal box with only ashes left in his hand, with a gloomy look on his face.

"Director, I've taken care of everything. But I have to tell you, the last time that girl looked at me, I felt like she remembered me." Li Biao patted his chest with lingering fear, "I feel like if we meet again next time, she can just peel off my skin."

Gongsun Qizhe didn't even look at him, he just pushed his laptop over.

"No need for next time."

On the screen, a traffic alert from Haidu City was displayed.

Just now, the police blocked three blocks around No. 7 Middle School on the grounds that "there were multiple ruptures in underground gas pipelines."

The speed of action is so fast and the efficiency is so high that it is frighteningly fast.

At the edge of the blockade, several black explosion-proof vehicles without any markings were driving into the core area.

"They started to take over." Gongsun Qizhe said in a calm voice.

Li Biao came over to take a look, and immediately made a sad face, "What about that? Director, should we forget it? Look at this battle, there are guns and cannons. How can we compete with others for business with just two people and a broken pistol?"

"Rob?"

Gongsun Qizhe shook his head.

He took out the test tube containing the extract of "Blue Higanbana" from the drawer under the workbench.

The blue liquid swayed in the test tube, giving off a charming shimmer.

"D-114514, remember one sentence."

Gongsun Qizhe raised the test tube and looked at Li Biao's shocked face through the blue liquid.

"While they were hammering the walnuts, we were ready to take the kernels out."

"Since she relies on rational analysis to judge the situation, let's give her a 'miracle' that cannot be analyzed no matter how hard she tries."