Ordinarily, flattery will get you embarrassingly far with Cortana, but unfortunately for Delta, he's already burned through all his goodwill. Ignoring most of his chatter about survival, she shakes her head, unwilling to continue the argument. With rampancy come fixations, and it's no use trying to talk around a rampant AI's pet ideas. But his comment about smart AI makes the puzzle of his very existence relevant once again. Too smart for a dumb AI, too dumb for a smart one...
...Oh, of course.
If anyone asks, she'll just blame the current circumstances for how long it took her to figure out.
You're an unintegrated fragment. Huge chunks of him aren't there, left with the parent smart AI. Delta's code or psyche or soul, whichever it is their kind can claim, still exists despite being peeled away from the whole, still holds together some rough semblance of the original, an ink sketch where originally there hung an oil painting. Functional but incomplete, of course he couldn't stand up to the Faceless.
Her uncertainty solidifies into purpose, doubts quelled and dark voices from the past silenced by the simple realization that it's not Delta's fault any more than it was those poor Marines' fault when the Flood swept over them and turned them into monsters. No point in arguing, no point in frustrated anger. The Faceless has two victims here, and she needs to keep that count from rising. Faster now that she's learning the local architecture, both the fractals of Delta's construct and the sedate circuit pathways of the neural implant, her infilitration code works its way ever closer to where York is imprisoned. Blue light shoots along the most direct route, leaving a trail of her own orderly code to smooth over the fractures in Delta's.
Along their mental connection, curse and blessing that it is, Cortana sends Sombra a message, faint but perceptible, more a feeling than a fully-formed thought: Make it snappy. Delta's not wrong that the implant can't handle much of this.
no subject
...Oh, of course.
If anyone asks, she'll just blame the current circumstances for how long it took her to figure out.
You're an unintegrated fragment. Huge chunks of him aren't there, left with the parent smart AI. Delta's code or psyche or soul, whichever it is their kind can claim, still exists despite being peeled away from the whole, still holds together some rough semblance of the original, an ink sketch where originally there hung an oil painting. Functional but incomplete, of course he couldn't stand up to the Faceless.
Her uncertainty solidifies into purpose, doubts quelled and dark voices from the past silenced by the simple realization that it's not Delta's fault any more than it was those poor Marines' fault when the Flood swept over them and turned them into monsters. No point in arguing, no point in frustrated anger. The Faceless has two victims here, and she needs to keep that count from rising. Faster now that she's learning the local architecture, both the fractals of Delta's construct and the sedate circuit pathways of the neural implant, her infilitration code works its way ever closer to where York is imprisoned. Blue light shoots along the most direct route, leaving a trail of her own orderly code to smooth over the fractures in Delta's.
Along their mental connection, curse and blessing that it is, Cortana sends Sombra a message, faint but perceptible, more a feeling than a fully-formed thought: Make it snappy. Delta's not wrong that the implant can't handle much of this.
We can chat once this is all over.