The cloud of mist floated out of a high tower and seemingly vanished an instant later.
The high tower was painted in red and black, and the word "Vandalize" was painted across its front.
This was the third biggest Manufacturer of Mark Wild City and was led by three people, the most powerful member being the Chief Zephyx Extractor, who was a Peak Expert.
Vandalize's tower was big, towering over almost every other building in its surroundings.
However, there were still two buildings that were even taller, but they were over two kilometers away.
In fact, one of them was so big that it counted as a megastructure with a height of over a kilometer and a width of almost 300 meters.
This megastructure housed the government and the biggest Manufacturer of the city.
In many cities, the biggest Manufacturers worked together with the government in a symbiotic relationship.
This was not really how Aegis envisioned its cities to be run, but it's a sad reality that over 30% of cities were run like this.
Inside the megastructure, in a random room 75% way up the building, four people sat in different locations, doing different things.
This was Shirley's squad.
The red-haired Mendor lay on the couch, acting like he was sleeping, which he definitely wasn't.
Cynthia sat on a chair in front of the desk, talking animatedly with Shirley, who sat opposite her.
Surprisingly, the two of them laughed quite a bit as they talked.
Near the kitchen, Steve drew several lines on a sheet of paper.
All the sheets of paper were covered with the blueprints of Vandalize's tower.
"You got an idea yet?" Cynthia shouted to Steve.
"No," Steve answered, not looking up.
"Then, what are you still doing there? If you didn't get one by now, what makes you think you will get one in the future?" Cynthia asked casually.
Steve frowned.
"I have to be prepared," Steve answered without looking away from the plans.
"Steve, we need to wait for Nick," Cynthia said with a sigh. "You can look through the plans all day, but as long as we don't know where the Specter is, you won't get anywhere. Also, we don't even know if the requester is actually right. This might just be another one of these attempts to get rid of an upstart Manufacturer."
Sadly, Cynthia's attempt at calming Steve down didn't achieve anything.
He didn't want to show his true feelings in front of his team, but he failed.
The squad had been working together for around eight years now, and everyone already knew everyone else.
Mendor and Cynthia could see that Steve was incredibly nervous.
However, they couldn't fault him.
"You've been lucky so far," Shirley spoke calmly as she turned to look at Steve's back. "But you can't keep being lucky forever."
Steve took a deep breath.
"I know," he answered.
The atmosphere seemingly became heavier.
Mendor lightly opened his eyes, but he didn't look around.
There was a rare look of worry in his eyes.
In fact, everyone in here was worried.
Even Shirley.
Just a week ago, they had received a mission that was marked to be genuine.
The strongest Manufacturer of Mark Wild City was the requester, and they requested an investigation with the eventual eradication of Vandalize.
The requester suspected that Vandalize was harboring an illegal Specter that proved to be a danger to the entire city.
Naturally, the government had already done many sweeps and tests, but they never found anything.
After many of these sweeps, the smaller Manufacturers, led by the second-biggest Manufacturer, banded together because of the obvious favoritism the government was giving the biggest Manufacturer.
All these pointless sweeps and inspections were obviously just there to intimidate Vandalize and to interrupt their work.
Because of that, the government had to become really careful.
Sure, the government and the biggest Manufacturer were stronger than everything else in the city, but if an actual civil war broke out, the city wouldn't be able to pay its tribute to Aegis.
That was the last thing the Governor wanted since that would ruin their chances of ever becoming an Agent.
Additionally, they had already issued so many inspections and sweeps on Vandalize that the Governor might even be in danger of being judged as corrupt by Aegis.
But they weren't corrupt!
They were sure that Vandalize was hiding some kind of dangerous Specter!
The signs were there!
But would anyone believe them?
In the end, the biggest Manufacturer decided to call Aegis.
Naturally, the Governor became terrified, but it was already too late.
Shirley's squad arrived just hours later.
Cynthia sighed.
She was just as nervous as everyone else.
The squad had worked together for eight years by now, and they had not lost a single person, which was rare.
However, that was actually not the thing she was worried about.
In the past eight years, they had also not needed to kill a human.
Criminals rarely came into contact with the squad since those were handled by the local governments.
They had only apprehended four criminals within the last eight years.
Three of them were handed over to the government, and one of them had been taken care of by Nick in secret.
The team had had many practice fights with Extractors from other squads.
The team had also had many genuine fights with Specters.
However, they had never been in a genuine life-and-death battle with humans.
That also included their time before Aegis.
Cynthia, Mendor, and Steve were all progenies from households of extreme elites.
They had incredible education, perfect training, and streamlined careers.
They had rarely been involved with anything illegal, and they had never joined any really dangerous battles.
After all, they were the ticket for their families to finally get a foothold in Aegis.
Their families wouldn't risk their lives that easily.
Sadly, that meant that they had never genuinely fought another Extractor.
Almost nobody looked forward to killing another human for the first time, and those who did almost certainly wouldn't find themselves working for Aegis.
They knew that they had to kill humans sometimes, but after working for Aegis for so long, they had also internalized Aegis' ideology.
Logically, they could rationalize killing humans, but emotionally, there was a huge barrier.
They really hoped that this was just another case of somebody trying to use Aegis to get rid of a rival.
The squad had come into contact with something like that more than once over the years.
Suddenly, the door opened, and everyone looked over.
Nick entered the room with a neutral expression.
The expressions of his squad members were nervous and attentive, while Shirley looked at him with furrowed brows.
Naturally, Shirley had killed many humans before.
She wasn't as inexperienced as the other three.
However, after such a long time with the squad, she also had mixed feelings.
On the one hand, it was important to learn about killing humans for trainees, but on the other hand, she really didn't want to see her squad go through such a harrowing experience.
Well, except…
Shirley looked at Nick.
She still didn't know a lot about Nick's background since he kept all details secret, but she could tell that Nick must have doomed more than his fair share of people if he managed to create a powerful Manufacturer out of nothing.
The opposition must have been powerful, and yet, Nick's Manufacturer still prevailed until he was an Expert.
Nick had to have a lot of experience when it came to killing people.
Shirley glanced at the other three.
But he was different from those three.
"What's the status, Nick?" Steve asked after taking a deep breath and turning around.
Nick emotionlessly looked at Steve.
"There is an unsuppressed Fanatic in their basement. The entire upper echelon of Vandalize is made of its minions. I witnessed how a Peak Veteran was turned into a minion with my own eyes," Nick neutrally reported.
The atmosphere seemingly froze.
Nick had confirmed their worst fears.
The Governor had been right.
Vandalize was completely compromised.
Mendor closed his eyes again as he took a deep breath.
Cynthia furrowed her brows and looked to the ground.
Steve slowly stood up and walked to the middle of the room.
"Could you have saved the new minion?" Steve asked calmly.
"No, because that would go against your orders," Nick answered.
Steve clenched his fists.
Steve was the leader of this squad.
After many missions, everyone agreed that Steve should be the leader.
Cynthia couldn't handle the responsibility, and Mendor was not interested in leading the team.
That left Steve and Nick.
In the beginning, Nick led the team, but as more time passed, he gave Steve more and more responsibility.
The main reason was that they were trainees and that they were supposed to learn things.
Despite Steve's initial problems, he actually had a very fitting personality for being a leader.
Additionally, leading a squad while infiltrating enemy lines was not the best option.
As the scout, Nick was the furthest one from his team, making it difficult to adequately command them.
When Steve heard that Nick said that he couldn't have saved the Veteran due to orders, his emotions wanted to explode on Nick.
However, Steve had learned to control himself and to logically analyze a situation, even while extremely furious.
Nick was right.
Steve had given him the order to scout and report back.
This was on him.
'Additionally, would I be happy if he attacked the enemy?' Steve thought. 'No, I would have called him reckless.'
'Nick did the right thing.'
Steve took a shaky breath.
His orders were the reason why a human died.
But his orders had also been correct.
Sadly, that didn't help with the pain.
"Good work," Steve said.