"Very interesting," the Technician commented as he looked at a display on his Barrier.
The display showed a person's vital signs.
Based on the vital signs, their blood pressure was elevated, and they had a heart rate of almost 150 beats per minute.
All of these little nuggets of information were cool and all, but one didn't need to see all of this to know what was actually going on.
Nick looked at a tall and muscular man.
The muscular man was breathing rapidly, and cold sweat was running down his entire body. His muscles were strained, and his eyes were fixed on Nick.
The man was having an intense fight-or-flight response.
His body would obviously choose flight, but the door behind him was closed.
"He-hey!" the man shouted casually with a nervous smile. "What's up?"
Naturally, he was trying to dispel the awkwardness of Nick just emotionlessly looking at him.
"You also from these parts?" he asked.
The Technician observed further deterioration of the man's mental state but chalked it up to Nick's ability to highlight the presence of an awkward atmosphere by being silent and not reacting to anything.
After a while, the Technician nodded, and a moment later, the door behind the man opened.
The man almost jumped away in fear as he heard the noise of the door behind him opening.
"Oh, hey, I-I think that means I should leave. Okay, bye!" the man said as he quickly stepped through the door.
The man quickly walked to the exit of the research area and left.
"I think that's enough for now," Nick heard the Technician's voice inside his head. "You really scared every single one of them just by standing there."
Nick sighed. "I'm genuinely not trying to scare them," he said with what sounded like helplessness.
"I could tell," the Technician said with a laugh. "But no matter what you do, every normal human will perceive your actions as threatening."
Nick looked to the side with a lost expression. "There's really no doubt anymore?" he asked.
"Nah, that pretty much sealed it," the Technician said. "You're 48 for 50. You scared almost everyone just by making different faces."
Nick tried to come to terms with his new reality.
The Technician had put Nick through many experiments over the past few days to learn everything that they could about his new circumstances.
Nick even felt a bit guilty that a Shield was wasting all of this time on him, but the Technician just said that this was way more important than anything else.
This concerned humanity's future!
At least, that's what he said with an excited grin.
Their most recent experiment tried to find out how Nick's new state of being affected other people in his vicinity.
To test this, they had brought in many different normal humans.
Initially, Nick was just supposed to stand there and do nothing.
Yet, every single time, the person in front of Nick started to get a fight or flight response and became very scared.
When asked about their thoughts while standing in front of Nick, all of them reported that they felt like Nick was filled with unending hatred and that he was about to attack them any second now.
He felt very, very dangerous to them.
Naturally, the Technician had been present during all of these events, and he could tell that Nick was just relaxed and normal.
After that, Nick turned around for the next couple of people.
The next people only saw Nick's back, but they still felt afraid of him.
They were terrified that he would turn around and that they would see something horrifying.
Then, Nick started to smile and introduce himself as soon as the people entered.
Nick had gone through many meetings in his life, and he was very good at appearing charismatic and friendly.
Eight of the ten people still felt scared.
The last two weren't scared, but they felt like they couldn't possibly trust Nick.
They felt like everything he said was a lie.
No matter what Nick did, all of his actions were interpreted in the most hostile way possible.
And sadly, that made sense.
Since the Specter Core surrounded Nick's Zephyx Synchronizer, every bit of Zephyx that came out of it was Specter Zephyx, not human Zephyx.
This meant that Nick essentially had the aura of a Specter, and humans were instinctively terrified of Specters.
Specters were their natural enemies.
Naturally, Nick was still human.
He could still feel things, albeit in a dampened way.
This was another thing that had changed.
Even normal people had a slight bit of Prephyx and Zephyx traveling through their bodies, but the amount was so minuscule that it counted as basically nothing.
However, this little bit still made a difference.
Being around a Specter naturally made someone feel nervous and antsy.
Even Extractors felt that. They were just used to it and could deal with the anxiety.
It was human nature to be wary of Specters.
So, what about Nick?
He wasn't any different.
He also felt some anxiety while being around Specters.
But the issue was that Specter Zephyx was continually traveling throughout his body.
This meant that Nick's subconscious constantly felt like a Specter was inside of him or surrounding him.
Nick consciously and logically knew that this wasn't the case, but his emotions didn't care about that.
They would continue feeling antsy and anxious.
And that made it more difficult for Nick to feel other emotions.
His "emotional pipeline" was constantly occupied with housing anxiety, leaving less space for everything else.
That left less space for any kind of emotion, including negative ones.
Usually, one would think that panic, stress, rage, and sadness would be amplified and easier to feel in such a state, but that wasn't the case.
This wasn't the normal kind of anxiety.
This was anxiety born by being close to a Specter.
His mind and body were in a constant survival mode.
This created an "urgent and icy calm" inside of Nick.
The Specter Zephyx was also what made Nick feel like he was freezing all the time.
Nick's Zephyx Synchronizer wasn't surrounded and bathed by the "warm and welcoming" Prephyx of the atmosphere but by the "cold and icy" Zephyx of a Specter.
However, Nick wasn't entirely sure if he was happy with this or not.
On the one hand, he felt very unnatural, and he felt like he should really fix this state since humans were not supposed to be this way.
But on the other hand, his guilt was no longer as overbearing as before since it was clouded by the new anxiety.
It was not worse or better.
It was… different.
Yet, that wasn't all that was different.
There was also a big difference with his powers and how they developed.
A positive aspect was that Nick's Zephyx regeneration was even faster than it was before.
Additionally, he could become a Specialist and was ready to advance at any time.
There was another positive aspect, but it would remain a negative for a couple of years.
Due to the Manipulation Lines on the Specter Core, Nick couldn't properly use his abilities right now, weakening him considerably.
However, the Technician was already in the process of developing a way to alter the Manipulation Lines.
Or, more precisely, he was working on a method to alter them.
The Technician wouldn't be able to alter them, but his technique would give Nick a way to alter them.
The Technician had been working on this technique for centuries already, and it was nowhere near complete.
However, he was planning on giving Nick a prototype version to try out. It would be much easier for the owner of the Specter Core to change the lines.
If everything worked out just as expected, Nick would be able to reshape the Manipulation Lines to not only restore but augment his previous abilities.
If shaped correctly, Nick's Specter Core would be able to work as an amplifier for the unique Zephyx coming out of his Zephyx Synchronizer.
That was only possible by having a Zephyx Synchronizer inside of a Specter Core.
Nick was already focusing on learning more about Spectology, biology, and Zephyx Manipulation.
He would need to know a lot about these topics if he wanted to reshape the Manipulation Lines of his Specter Core.
Yet, there was one last thing that was different, and Nick wasn't a fan of that at all.
It was concerning his future advancement in level.
Just as expected, Nick's Specter Core didn't allow Zephyx from foreign Specters to go through it, which meant that Nick's Zephyx Synchronizer couldn't advance.
However, since it produced its own Specter Zephyx, Nick's Zephyx Synchronizer could absorb that.
But how did his Specter Core produce Zephyx?
After a lot of experimenting, the Technician and Nick found out how.
Nick was producing Specter Zephyx constantly, but the production was much higher during the day.
In the late hours, his production fell by quite a bit.
The reason was that humans were generally asleep in the late hours.
Nick produced Zephyx like a Specter now, and his way of producing Zephyx was to make humans suffer.
The more they suffered and the more powerful the suffering person was, the more Zephyx Nick produced.
That was not easy for Nick to accept.