Kill the Sun

There were screens everywhere!

Nick could see metallic chairs in front of big tables filled with screens!

The room was over twenty meters wide and long, and almost everything was covered in screens!

Even more, all the screens were active, and they all displayed different things!

Nick could still hear the alarm, and he could also see that the light in the room was lightly pulsing at the same rate as the alarm.

When Nick looked closer, he saw many piles of dust near the monitors.

Not even the people here saw their deaths coming.

Nick walked over to the first monitor and looked at it.

It was filled with random drawings and words he couldn't read.

Nick randomly pressed different buttons on the display, which changed what it was showing.

After some time, the display stopped reacting to Nick's inputs, and he just scratched the back of his head.

So, he just went to the next display.

'Wait, is that the mountain I'm in?' Nick thought as he looked at the image on the display.

He could see the outline of the mountain and the outline of the place he was in inside the mountain.

The outermost door and the door to this room were blinking red.

'Huh?' Nick thought as he saw that there was a huge room even further in.

Nick looked forward and noticed something.

The huge monitors at the end of the room were not actually monitors but windows.

Nick had thought that they were just inactive monitors since they were just black, but after looking more closely, he could see the outlines of a couple of objects behind them.

He decided to ignore the monitors for now and went to the door at the side, which seemed to lead into the huge room at the end.

Then, Nick saw something beside the door that he was very familiar with.

A switch!

An actual switch!

He knew what to do with that!

Nick pressed the switch.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

Nick's eyes widened as one light after the other turned on behind the windows.

Now, he could see what was in the room, and he was shocked at what he saw.

It was an absolutely gigantic machine!

There were metallic tubes, lights, and displays everywhere!

Even more, there were several parts of the machine that were actually moving from time to time!

'This has to be the power source!' Nick thought. 'I don't know how old these ruins are, but it's crazy that this thing is still working after so long!'

Nick pressed another button beside the door.

SHING!

And the door opened by vanishing into the wall.

That was when Nick felt something shocking.

Zephyx!

The air flowing out of the big hall was filled with Zephyx!

'Wait, so they do have access to Zephyx?!'

Nick took a deep breath and entered the big hall.

The density of Zephyx in the air was crazy.

Nick decided to approach the machine, and the closer he got, the higher the density of the Zephyx became.

By now, Nick was certain that the Zephyx came out of the machine.

'Is there a Specter in there?' he thought.

However, that didn't seem very likely.

'So then, is this machine making Zephyx out of Prephyx?' Nick thought in shock.

'But that's impossible!'

'Only Specters can do that!'

Nick just looked at the machine in stunned silence.

By now, he had become quite nervous.

'This is too big for me,' Nick thought as the same feeling appeared as when Envy had targeted him for the first time.

'This is something for Aegis.'

Nick turned around and left the room.

However, before he left the big room with the displays, he decided to take a look at a couple more.

Maybe he could learn something.

On one of the monitors, he saw a map.

Sadly, he had no idea what kind of map this was.

Nick also saw a top-down view of this place on one of the monitors.

This top-down view showed another two big rooms adjacent to the huge room with the Zephyx machine.

Most of the monitors just had some indecipherable things on them.

However, there was one with a very interesting picture.

There were many balls on a diagram of different sizes.

There was a huge one in the center, and there were several more balls of different sizes in different locations.

However, there were two balls that were different from all the other ones.

One of the balls was surrounded by a red circle.

Even more, there was a much smaller ball beside the circled ball, and that small ball was marked with an upside-down red triangle with a big dot inside it.

It was obvious that the red symbolized danger or hostility.

Nick just scratched the back of his head in confusion.

He had no idea what this image represented or what it was trying to tell him.

Nick looked at the remaining monitors but couldn't find anything else of value.

'I guess that's it,' Nick thought. 'I have been here for about 40 minutes now. I shouldn't keep the others waiting.'

Nick turned to the huge room with the Zephyx machine.

He quickly made a decision.

'I have to tell Aegis about this place.'

'Although, I'm not sure if this is big enough to call Simon. After all, he's a Protector.'

'I should probably just tell the governor.'

At that moment, Nick furrowed his brows.

'The governor can't be trusted,' Nick thought.

'What if he just keeps all of this to himself and tries to silence me? He doesn't give a shit about the poor people, so why should he give a shit about me?'

Nick looked at the exit with narrowed eyes.

'I can't risk my life like this.'

'The governor can silence me without many issues, but it won't be so easy if he has to talk to someone more powerful.'

'I guess the best option is to tell Julian about all of this.'

'Most likely, he will just sell the location of this place to the governor or Aegis.'

'Like this, we will get some profit, and I get to keep living.'