The group quickly came to a fairly large room at the end of the hallway. The door looked like something you'd find on a bank vault, but thankfully it was already open. Inside they found shelves stacked with canned goods and water, communication equipment, a hilariously outdated computer and a bank of monitors, and an oddly high-end bed for what was obviously a panic room.
"Is this the right place?" Nick asked. "This is a nice little hidey-hole, but..." he trailed off as he gestured to the conspicuously empty room.
"Yep!" Abby chirped. "It's through there," she pointed to the door at the back right corner of the room.
It was a pretty standard bathroom, aside from the paper towel dispenser next to the sink. Which was exactly what Abby guided N over to and had him kneel down so she could reach the knob.
The little droneling proceeded to pull the knob out slightly and twist it back and forth much like she did with the pen stand.
"Five, two, two, four, push and wait," Abby once again "whispered" to herself, making the others wonder if there was something wrong with her audials.
There was a low click from somewhere inside the wall behind the dispenser, and after five seconds the wall behind the toilet began to fade like a desert mirage as it transformed into some kind of translucent substance.
"Is that..." Konstantin trailed off in awe.
"A freaking NANO WALL?!" Uzi shrieked, also in awe.
"A what?" N asked in confusion.
"A nano wall," Konstantin replied, drawing some surprised looks, especially from Uzi and Nick. Outside of weapon tests, the Russian drone never spoke directly to N. "A surface made up of billions of nanomachines that changes density based on the amount of current running through it. When they are dormant, the wall is solid and very strong. But with proper power they activate and allow things to pass through."
"Huh. Is that why it kinda tickles?" N asked as he waved an arm through the strange not-fluid
"Yes."
That was one of many reasons nanowalls were a rarity despite being invented several centuries ago. They were perhaps THE prime example of "Necro-Tech": something that was DOA on the market but kept getting resurrected every few years, usually by upstart companies who put more into PR than R&D and wanted to make a name for themselves early.
Notoriously temperamental due to extreme sensitivity to wattage, amps, etc., nano walls were practically useless outside of places with the most reliable and up-to-date power grids. But even then they were dangerously unpredictable. However, the straw that broke the human's back was the sensation of the nanites crawling over every single micrometer of exposed skin. To them it felt like falling into the world's largest spider nest and being swarmed.
Panic attacks could be waved away, and PTSD could be paid away, but people dropping dead on the spot from massive heart attacks on live TV was the kind of thing that killed products and companies alike. At least until the next time some silver spoon techie wanted to use their parents' money to bring something "revolutionary" to the masses.
"Humans try it a thousand times and it goes nowhere, but when robots take a crack at it, it works out. Go figure," Uzi snarked.
"I would like to know how it's still working when there's no power," Konstantin muttered to himself.
"I'm thinking a power cell inside the wall," Uzi ventured, nerding out enough to forget just how high up on her shitlist Konstantin was. "That click we heard was probably the circuit completing."
