Kill the Sun

After dealing with the Money Sink, Nick went to the other Specter they had received.

It was already evening, but Nick didn't have other things to do.

Luckily, the Veteran who had delivered the other Specter had already explained all the details to Nick.

This Specter had been suppressed by the city for several years already, and the process of working with it had already been perfected.

The city didn't act uncooperatively and directly told Dark Dream how to work with it.

Many Extractors had already worked with it.

The process of working with it wasn't nice, but it produced a ton of Zephyx with no real danger.

Nick himself wouldn't be working with this Specter regularly, but he still wanted to work with it at least once to know what his employees would go through.

Nick entered the second floor of Dark Dream, the floor for Possession Specters.

Then, Nick walked to one of the Containment Units, but instead of entering directly, Nick typed several things into the Containment Unit.

The city had told Dark Dream that they needed a special Containment Unit for this Specter.

The Containment Unit was a bit more expensive than the normal version, but it made this specific Specter essentially harmless.

This Containment Unit had three special functions.

The first one was that it couldn't be opened from the inside.

Not even Extractors could open it from the inside.

If someone wanted to get out, they would need to destroy the Containment Unit, or someone from the outside would have to open it.

The second function was a timer.

When the timer was up, the third function of the Containment Unit would become active, and the exit would open.

The city said that shifts with this Specter should be 24 hours long and that nobody should work more than one shift every week with this Specter.

Preferably not more than once every two weeks.

For now, Nick put in a timer of five hours.

He wasn't really here to work with it but to see how it would feel to work with it properly.

Nick opened the door and entered.

BANG!

The door behind him closed, and it wouldn't open for five hours.

Nick inspected the door from the inside.

'Sure enough, no way to get out,' he thought.

Then, Nick looked at the center of the Containment Unit.

On the floor was a small object.

Nick walked forward and picked it up.

It was a pair of glasses.

They looked as inconspicuous as one could imagine.

This was the Specter.

Nick looked at them for a while before he put them on.

Then, he looked around and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

'Not much going on, huh?' Nick thought.

'Well, they did say that it takes around an hour for them to really show their effect.'

For an hour, Nick just waited in boredom.

"Nick!"

Nick was startled back to consciousness as he heard the speakers in the Containment Unit speak his name.

It was Wyntor's voice!

"The Dreamer has broken out!" Wyntor shouted.

Nick's eyes widened in shock.

"What? How?!" he shouted.

"It gained a mental ability that hypnotized one of our Extractors, who let him out! We have to catch it!" Wyntor shouted.

Nick took a deep breath, took off the glasses, and ran towards the exit.

Then, he remembered that he couldn't get out on his own.

"Wyntor, let me out!" Nick shouted.

Silence.

"Wyntor!"

Silence.

Nick looked at the speakers…

But saw no speakers.

For a moment, Nick was confused.

"Wait, what?" Nick uttered.

Then, Nick remembered that this Containment Unit actually didn't have any speakers and looked at the glasses.

'They got me,' Nick thought with a sigh.

The glasses, which were officially called the Glasses, distorted someone's reality.

They created voices that weren't there.

They created smells that weren't there.

They could even create visions.

Luckily, the Glasses mainly created auditory hallucinations.

Visual hallucinations were quite rare, and when they appeared, they were rather mild.

It was more confusing and perplexing than horrifying.

After a bit, Nick chuckled and put the glasses back on.

This was how an Extractor worked with the Glasses.

They put them on, went through a couple of hallucinations for 24 hours, and then left.

Some minutes later, Nick felt like the room was becoming a bit blurry until, eventually, it became foggy.

Nick felt like he was inside the Fog's Containment Unit.

For about two hours, Nick felt like he was in the Fog's Containment Unit.

Then, the fog vanished.

After that, Nick felt like Jenny and Trevor were talking to him from just outside his vision.

Nick even held a conversation with them.

Of course, Nick kept telling himself that the conversation hadn't really happened.

Another hour later, Nick's nose scrunched up as the smell of the Dung Heap appeared in the Containment Unit.

He really wasn't a fan of that one.

Eventually, Nick put the Glasses to the side.

Five hours were close to being up, and Nick just waited for the last couple of minutes.

Nick leaned against the wall for the last few minutes.

And then, the third unique function of the Containment Unit appeared.

WHOOOOOSH!

A strong gust of wind pushed Nick to the side, almost making him fall to the ground.

When the timer ended, the Containment Unit created this powerful gust of wind to remove the Glasses from the Extractor's face.

And when the gust of wind appeared, Nick's eyes widened in shock.

Just now, he had seen the glasses flying away from his eyes!

But how?!

He had taken them off earlier!

He had heard that there had been instances of Extractors thinking that they had taken the glasses off when, in reality, they hadn't, but he hadn't expected that the illusions were THAT convincing!

In shock, Nick just looked at the Glasses getting flung against the wall of the Containment Unit with quite a bit of force.

Luckily, they were far more durable than normal glasses.

Some seconds later, the wind stopped, and the exit opened.

Nick walked out and closed the Containment Unit.

Then, he looked at the Zephyx he had produced.

'Twelve grams,' Nick thought. 'Seems about right.'

The Glasses produced Zephyx based on the amount of time they had been worn and on the power of the person wearing them.

The upper limit was a Mid John.

24 hours of being worn by a Mid John produced about 95 grams of Zephyx.

If Nick wore them for 24 hours, they would produce about 60 grams of Zephyx.

'It's definitely weird working with them, but I think people would rather work with this than with the Bleeding Lady, the Lover, or the Dreamer.'

'And it also produces a lot of Zephyx.'

'Sure enough, the Glasses are a great Specter!'