Artifact Report

Chapter 283 Brianna What do you want?
The person who came to pick her up was a burly, middle-aged policeman.

Half an hour ago, Brianna sat at a distance and watched him for a while as he stepped step by step across the rocky beach.

He hooked one thumb on his belt and swung the baton at his waist. Every step he took revealed impatience, as if he didn't understand why he had to run all the way to the beach where there was not even a flat surface to pick someone up.

"Hey!"

The male police officer didn't plan to continue climbing down. He stood on the slope and shouted, "Are you Green? Come up quickly, I'm here to pick you up! This road is really fucking long."

Even though it was the director's order, he still didn't feel good.

I wonder what excuse Ashley made to get the police to pick her up?
Brianna gathered her limbs, straightened her head, which had been tilted on her shoulders, and slowly lifted her body from the rocky beach.

She could almost feel the male police officer tense up as he looked at her.

Brianna could still, just as she had before, reach inside Green and help him move; but if Green had been a plastic doll that could stand on its own, now he was a hollow rag doll that always wanted to limp down.

When she walked, her head swayed back and forth and left and right, and after a few seconds, she had to straighten her chest again.

"Are you drunk or something?"

The male police officer watched her approaching with a wary look on his face, and subconsciously put one hand on his waist.

"No drinking,"

Brianna covered the black hole on her face that was pierced by the Noh mask fragments with one hand and spoke vaguely.

"Then why can't you go home by yourself?" the male police officer said, "You and the chief are—"

Before he could finish the second half of his sentence, his throat seemed to be stuck and there was a "click" sound.

...see the bullet wound on your temple.

Green's hair was not long; Brianna had just wet it with sea water and tried to stick the wet hair to her temple, trying to cover the deep, hideous tear and the burns caused by the gunfire.

The male police officer opened his eyes wide, and his nostrils looked like open, flapping wings.

He stared at Brianna and took two steps back.

Under his gaze, she couldn't help but reach out and touch it - and found a few pieces of broken bones from her wet hair.

"I accidentally bumped into something," Brianna said, quietly wiping a bit of brain tissue on her pants and giving an unconvincing explanation.

It was obvious that the policeman wanted to scream, run away, and even shoot her in the face - but when people are faced with fear beyond common sense, they will be like drowned people, and no matter how pale and ridiculous the explanation is, they will cling to it as a life-saving straw.

"How, how did you get hurt...?"

“Hit the rocks,” Brianna said.

The male police officer half opened his mouth, his tongue soaked in saliva, and turned it over several times, but couldn't speak.

"Don't worry," Brianna said, walking toward the police car still running on the road. "It just looks serious, but it's actually just a Band-Aid. Your chief has said that, right? I have to go see her as soon as possible."

To reassure him, she sat in the back seat of the police car, which was the suspect's seat and was separated from the driver's seat by a partition.

Brianna sat there for a long time before she saw the male policeman staggering towards her as if in a dream.

Along the way, he kept looking at Brianna in the rearview mirror, his face pale.

Humans are indeed very good at self-deception. Even a policeman who had already seen that she was dead seemed to have finally convinced himself when he arrived at the police station that Brianna might have been just badly injured, and he was even able to chat with her in daily life.

"Why do you keep covering your face?" he ventured as Brianna got out of the car. "Is your face hurt too?"

…It was the first time she felt that emotion.

It is both sadism and self-abuse, a cruel pleasure mixed with self-abandonment.

Brianna removed her hand, revealing a deep hole in her cheek.

When the male police officer was stunned, she slowly inserted her index finger into the black hole on her face under his gaze, until she reached the last joint.

“…Green!”

She turned her head at the sound and saw a dark-skinned, capable-looking woman standing by the door of the Central Police Station. This time, the finger she inserted into the black hole did not come out from the other person's eye socket.

Ashley Page frowned, a look of disapproval on her face, but she managed to hold it in and just said, "This way, follow me."

Brianna pulled her fingers out, covered her face again, and turned to walk towards Ashley; as they walked in, she heard the sound of retching behind her.

That's the right reaction. That's it.

"You make it hard for me to explain,"

Ashley closed the office door unhappily and drew the blinds. "I thought you should know that people in our situation should be especially careful."

Brianna leaned into her chair and found that her strong smell of the sea was particularly out of place in this ordinary office filled with the smell of leather, paper and coffee.

Will Green's body begin to decay?

He had been dead for a long time, but after she put him on, he hadn't decayed... But this time, something seemed different. She couldn't control him flexibly. Was it because his brain was damaged?

"Hey, did you hear that?"

Ashley yelled, throwing a few large Band-Aids onto the desk.

Brianna came to her senses and picked up the Band-Aid. "You said 'our situation'... I'm curious, what kind of situation do you mean? What do you know?"

"Hole."

Ashley sat on the edge of the desk, and it seemed that this answer had been forming in her mind for a long time, and she blurted it out immediately.

"what?"

"We became 'holes'."

Ashley didn't look at her, staring at the wall opposite. "The nest... Ha, I still can't believe there's such a thing as a nest. Anyway, if there's a wall separating the nest from the human world, we're the holes in that wall. The denizens of the nest can reach through me into the human world. I'm not just talking about that; they can really reach in."

"It was Chase Monroe who turned me into a hole... You too, right? That whole thing was your idea, so of course he won't let you go."

Ashley tried to hold it in, but couldn't suppress the hint of sarcasm and anger in his voice. "In the end, it was your finger that stretched out from my eye socket... Ha, we really do have a connection."

For a moment, Brianna didn't understand what she meant - how could she be a hole? The nest dweller had never passed her and reached into - wait.

It dawned on her.

...Ashley still misunderstood.

She never revealed herself to be Brianna, Vesile's daughter.

The identity of "Brianna" only makes sense when facing a person; so although she always thinks of herself as Brianna, she always identifies herself as Green to others.

At the beach, while talking through the black hole in her face, she said she was George Green.

When she first approached Chief Ashley and suggested that the Central Police Department take the opportunity to arrest Chase, she was also Vesile's secretary, George Green.

Ashley naturally thought that the person sitting in front of her was George Green - a man who was shot and wounded by Chase in revenge, but somehow did not die, but instead established a connection with the nest.

On the other hand, Ashley was not wrong.

George Green may indeed be a "hole," but this hole no longer has any life or consciousness.

It was the resident—the resident Brianna—reaching out into the world through Green.

Ashley didn't know that the person she was actually talking to at the moment was actually a half-resident.

"Why did you target Chase Monroe's adoptive father? Was it because you knew about the existence of the lair? Can you and I ever return to our original state?"

While she was lost in thought, Ashley asked rapidly, "I still can't fully understand what he did to our police station. You were the instigator of all this, and he turned you into a hole. By now, you should tell me the whole truth."

Brianna tapped lightly on the desk surface. Green's fingers shifted back and forth, sometimes lightly, sometimes heavily, never quite finding the right balance.

It seems that the brain is indeed damaged. The central nervous system that controls the movement can only be replaced by a half-resident, which is naturally not very useful.

"...I underestimated Chase Monroe's feelings for his adoptive father. That's the only reason my plan failed. He's quick-witted, and he might have suspected that the police were arresting him to detain him, and that someone else was actually targeting Carolan... I took that into consideration.

"But I thought he would wait for release, escape, or call for help. I never imagined he would be so determined to get out and rescue people himself, even at the risk of his life, killing people, and even dragging the entire police station into the water."

why?
Brianna couldn't imagine it.

Not to mention that he was just a foster father who had no blood relationship with him and treated him like a dog; even if he was his biological father - if it was Wei Xilai who was in danger, would she bury the police station to save him? Are you kidding?
One possibility is that she had afternoon tea, got her hair done, and then strolled over to see what was going on.

Another possibility… Brianna smiled silently.

Then there is no need to mention it.

"In short, he called in a group of Hunter mercenaries, most likely their leader, Mercury, to use a technique called the 'Nest Network' on you. Simply put, your entire police station became something the Nest could easily capture."

She realized her gaffe, smiled softly, and said, "Oh, I forgot, you really did reach out from your eyes."

Ashley's face turned grim. "The fight between you hunters... dragged us into it, is that what you mean?"

"Yes."

Ashley's angry laugh was like a sharp piece of broken glass. "Do you know what happened to our police department? In less than ten days, four officers were hospitalized for mental illness, three resigned, and the data system crashed—"

Brianna interrupted.

"You agreed to this out of your own self-interest, right? Wasn't it because of Vesile that you were able to sit on the post of Chief of the Central Police Department? The person who helped you rise to prominence, please do me a small favor... I remember you agreed right away, without asking any questions. You were very proactive."

Seeing Ashley's face turn cold and he stood up from the table, Brianna added soothingly, "But don't get me wrong, I'm not mocking you. I'd be in a difficult situation without you, and I'm very grateful for your help... Now that things have come to this, I have a question for you."

"what?"

"What do you want next?" Brianna whispered. "Do you want to return to your original state? Do you want revenge? Or... do you want to gain power from the nest that humans cannot imagine?"

(End of this chapter)