Nick left the inside of the Containment Unit but didn't leave it completely.
Right now, Nick was between the inner walls of the Containment Unit and the outer walls.
There was a millimeter of free space between the two walls for air to flow through, and Nick used this to move towards a specific spot.
In the past, Nick wouldn't have been able to fit through such tiny openings, but ever since he had become a Specter, his mist ability had improved a lot.
Nick could easily fit through an opening that was only a millimeter wide without using any Zephyx, and he could also cause quite some damage in his mist form.
He had been able to improve his ability by changing the manipulation lines on his Specter Core, and he was nowhere near done.
His abilities would only get better with time.
A bit later, Nick reached the place where the employee entrance of the Containment Unit should be.
The mist wrapped around the cables and analyzed the Zephyx moving through them.
'This is the main line. This is the stabilizing line. This is the evacuation line…'
While the general functions of a Containment Unit were identical across all cities, the cities still made individual changes to their Containment Units.
Nick couldn't find out exactly what every function of the Containment Unit was, but he could see the general tendency.
'As expected,' Nick thought as he looked at one wire. 'There's a presence sensor.'
A presence sensor was something that checked if something was present. In this case, Nick.
Nick hadn't completely left the Containment Unit yet, which meant that he was still present.
Presence sensors were not difficult to make.
Tricking a presence center was extremely difficult as long as one was inside or outside a Containment Unit.
However, Nick was between those two places.
He was essentially "inside the lock".
Nick cut two wires and connected them in an instant.
'Easy,' Nick thought. 'Now, the presence sensor constantly receives a signal from the evacuation line. It's going to be very weak, but that's fine.'
The evacuation line was a cable that was extremely difficult to reach.
This was probably the only cable that no one could reach from the inside or the outside.
The reason for that was that the evacuation line was extremely important.
Its function was simple.
It checked if the main doors of the Containment Unit had received an order to open, and if they did, the evacuation line would send an alarm through the entire building.
One could only get to it by reaching into the tiny opening between the walls, which was basically impossible since the two walls were so incredibly hard.
A human wouldn't be able to do that.
But, well…
'I could now just open the main door,' Nick thought as he looked at the line that sends the signal to open the main door. 'I just need to put a bit of Zephyx in there, and the door will open in a couple of minutes.'
Sadly, opening the main door of any Containment Unit instantly was impossible without breaking the thing apart.
While the signal was electric, the delay of the opening was strictly mechanical, and the opening mechanism was completely encased in extremely tough metal.
After dealing with the two cables, Nick moved on and floated out of a couple of tiny holes near the bottom of the Containment Unit.
Nick turned back into his human form and looked at the Containment Unit.
Nothing happened.
Then, he tapped away on the console of the Containment Unit.
The only thing he could do was to open the employee entrance and to see if a Specter was present or not.
Every other function was behind a password.
Part of Nick's body transformed into mist again and entered the Containment Unit, while the remainder tapped away on the password field.
Nick sent the password, and the console said that it was the incorrect password.
'I see,' Nick thought.
Nick tapped on the password field again, while his mist body encased a couple of cables.
When Nick sent the password for verification, the signal of a cable was intercepted, and chaotic bits of Zephyx were infused into the cable.
The display said, "Waiting for verification," for quite a while.
Nick kept dumping waves of Zephyx in.
DING!
"Incorrect password."
"Incorrect password."
"Incorrect password."
"Incorrect password."
By now, an additional wire had become active, which was the one that would send a warning signal in case somebody typed in the incorrect password too many times.
Naturally, Nick had intercepted that signal as well.
"Incorrect password."
"Incorrect password."
DING!
"Welcome!"
And done.
The console sent the password to the verificatory at the back, and the verificatory sent a signal back based on if it was correct or not.
Nick had infused Zephyx into the wire, sending the result of the query back to the console.
This was a simple yes or no answer, and the signals of both shouldn't be very complex.
By just dumping in random Zephyx, Nick was bound to get to the correct signal at some point.
Nick typed away on the console.
'This thing doesn't have many functions,' Nick thought. 'Although, that's to be expected. These functions are used to market and sell your Containment Units for more money. I don't think the people of this city are very interested in that.'
Nevertheless, the basic functions were present.
'Register user.'
'Add Barrier code.'
Nick sent Zephyx into the sensor of the console, mimicking an extremely simple Barrier.
Proper Barrier codes were thousands of signals long, making it impossible to crack them.
However, Nick used a very simple code with just five signals.
If anyone wanted to hack this Containment Unit, it wouldn't be difficult.
But Nick didn't care about that.
It wasn't his Containment Unit.
Well, it kind of was his, but that was semantics.
'New user registered.'
'Employee entrance preference.'
'Isolation.'
After that, Nick changed a couple more settings.
'Alright. Let's test it.'
Next, Nick walked up to the employee entrance and sent the signal of his new user to the sensor.
DING!
A Barrier appeared behind Nick.
Nick sent a different signal.
DING!
The employee entrance opened.
Nick walked through and stopped in front of a Barrier on the other side.
DING!
The door behind him closed, and the Barrier in front of him opened.
Nick was back inside.
The employee entrances of Containment Units were like other big Barriers.
They could be solid or liquid.
By standard, they were always liquid, which meant that the physical door and the Barrier overlapped with each other and only allowed someone with a fitting Barrier to pass through.
It was like walking past a waterfall with a very strong umbrella.
However, the Barriers could also be changed to solid since a couple of Extractors had abilities that made them emanate Zephyx, which was very similar to Specter Zephyx.
Most Barriers would recognize this Zephyx as Specter Zephyx and would refuse to comply with orders.
In these cases, one just had to create a new user in the Containment Unit and change the Barrier type to solid.
In that case, opening and closing the employee entrance worked in three steps instead of one continuous one.
Additionally, the sensor wouldn't scan for Specter Zephyx inside the isolated space anymore and left everything up to the Barrier of the Extractor.
Nick just needed to send the user data to the employee entrance, and it would continue with the opening sequence.
These functions were in every Containment Unit that cost five million credits or more, which was already very cheap for a Containment Unit.
The one Nick was contained in probably approached a price of a billion credits.
'Well then,' Nick thought as he looked back at the employee entrance.
Then, he walked to the employee entrance.
DING!
DING!
DING!
And Nick was outside again.
'Really glad I actually decided to learn about Zephology,' Nick thought.
He was now a registered user and could simply waltz through the employee entrance despite being a Specter without a Barrier.
The next moment, Nick turned into mist and floated out of the door.
He found a hallway that was quite oily and dirty.
Sure enough, nobody cared enough to keep the hallways clean.
It was considered unnecessary work with no benefit.
Nick floated through the quiet hallway and looked into a couple of rooms.
Most of the rooms were empty, but there were also a couple of rooms with people inside them.
Eventually, Nick found the office of an Early Specialist.
It was a woman with unkempt brown hair, who looked at the papers in front of her with boredom and annoyance.
Nick entered the walls of the room and located the focal point of all light leading to the room.
Next, Nick exploded out of the hole.
BANG!
The woman's Barrier was broken in an instant, and she collapsed.
Finally, Nick blocked the focal point of the light, and the room became pitch black.
The Nightmare's influence took hold of her, and Nick used his ability to control what she was seeing.
Within minutes, Nick learned a ton about the city and the woman.
Yet, when he looked at her, he furrowed his brows.
'She's actually a good person.'
Nick remained silent as he looked at her.