Two months later, Nick managed to find and capture a Mid Hatchling.
As always, Nick found the Specter in the Dregs.
Funnily enough, the Specter was revealed by accident.
There was this guy in the Dregs who was considered to be one of the sickest people in existence.
Back when the entire thing with Envy happened, this guy had been just an honorary member of the Riker Strikers.
After the Riker Strikers collapsed, the guy started to find his victims on his own.
From what people had been saying, the guy was apparently capturing entire families and then forcing the members of the family to severely injure each other.
Nobody died during the process, but many people got crippled and traumatized.
While this could be considered strange, it wasn't unheard of in the Dregs.
Sick and twisted people were everywhere in the Dregs.
But then, the guy had the worst luck imaginable.
He kidnapped the family of a friend of one of Dark Dream's new Extractors.
Naturally, the Extractor asked their team leader, Trevor, for help.
Trevor quickly told Nick, and Nick told the Investigator department.
It didn't even take half a day to find the guy.
By now, Dark Dream had over 50 Investigators, and all of them knew the Dregs very well.
When they found the guy, they told Nick, who told Trevor, who told the new employee.
Naturally, the new employee ran to beat the shit out of the guy.
And then, things turned chaotic.
The guy was extremely strong and overwhelmed the Extractor.
Sadly, the Extractor was only an Initial Newbie, and the guy, who was a Specter, was already a Mid Hatchling.
The Investigators had still kept an eye on the place, and when they saw the brutal fight, they immediately realized that this was a Specter or some kind of rogue Extractor.
The Investigators all got their weapons out and ran at the Specter.
Naturally, after seeing so many people with weapons, the Specter realized that it had to flee.
Sure, it was far more powerful than a normal human, but it couldn't fight ten humans at once who all held guns in their hands.
A chase ensued.
Chaos broke out in the Dregs.
BANG!
And then, the guy's lower body was turned into dust as the sound of a gunshot thundered throughout the Dregs.
The child that Nick, Jonathan, and Kiara had found about two years ago was visiting one of her friends in the Dregs, and to make sure that nothing happened to her, Kiara had accompanied her.
Naturally, Kiara noticed the commotion, and when she saw Dark Dream's Investigators chasing after a guy who was jumping suspiciously far and high, she knew what was going on.
As an Initial John, it wasn't very difficult for her to stop the Specter.
She just shot once, and the guy was done.
After that, she just grabbed the Specter and carried it to Dark Dream under the protection of over 20 Investigators.
The guy was dumped into a Containment Unit, and Nick quickly went to experiment with him.
Turns out, even though the new Specter was a human Specter, talking to him was about as effective as talking to the Bleeding Lady.
The guy constantly acted like an unstable drug addict who kept screaming random, violent things at everyone who was present.
Even more, after a while of not getting what he wanted, the guy became so aggressive that he attacked everyone he saw.
Nevertheless, Nick found out what the guy needed to grow stronger.
Apparently, he gained power by forcing people to hurt their loved ones.
The stronger the love for that person and the greater the damage, the more Zephyx was produced.
Working with it would be very difficult.
On top of that, Nick was already not the biggest fan of this Specter.
After all, the Extractor that had initially fought the guy didn't come out unscathed.
He lost one of his arms.
Sadly, the body of a normal person wasn't strong enough to resist the side effects of regrowing a limb.
It was possible to regrow a limb with some advanced medicine, but the stress of regrowing the limb would kill the person.
One had to become an Initial Veteran first.
While Nick felt horrible for their new Extractor, he couldn't push a new employee like that towards becoming a Veteran.
Additionally, many Specters could perceive weakness.
For example, the Bleeding Lady would probably go crazy if she saw a one-armed person.
So, in the end, Nick moved the guy to the Investigator department with good pay.
All of this considered, Nick really wasn't the biggest fan of their newest Specter.
Nevertheless, Nick wanted to, at least, find out what kind of ability it could hand out.
He decided that he would hire two new Extractors, a husband and a wife, both from the Outer City.
The two of them would work with the new Specter, which Nick had dubbed the Empath, once.
The work was stressful and difficult, but the two new Extractors managed to gain the Empath's ability.
The ability was very interesting.
People with the ability could transfer injuries and damage to other people with the ability.
For example, if someone were to stab the wife, she could will it so that her wound disappeared while an identical one appeared on her husband's body.
With only two people, this ability was nice but nothing special.
However, Nick could see the great potential for this ability.
What if there were a hundred people?
If a huge explosion appeared in the middle of them, would everyone just receive a couple of burns instead of being blown to smithereens?
In the end, Nick handed the Empath to Wyntor, who would sell it.
The Empath was the first Specter that Dark Dream would sell or exchange, depending on the offer.
Working with it was just too difficult.
The only thing it was good for was the creation of many new recruits with the same ability, and Dark Dream didn't have the luxury of producing Newbies and selling them or growing them themselves.
Luckily, the ability was very good, which meant that they could exchange the Empath for a good Specter.
At least, that was what they had thought.
In the end, the city showed great interest in the Empath due to its power and offered something.
A pair of Specters.
Both of them were very similar, and they solved Dark Dream's problems of not having enough Specters for their Newbies.
