Nick opened the camera and took out a tiny roll of film.
CRK!
Nick crushed the roll of film in his hands and threw the camera to the ground in front of him.
After that, he walked to the side.
Several seconds of walking in silence later, Nick took hold of the pen and paper with the confession on it.
Nick quickly read through it.
It stated that Irwin had tried to kill Nick and that neither Solace nor Carl were involved in the matter.
Nick pocketed the confession and looked at Carl.
For a while, the two only looked at each other.
'Is he actually different?'
This was the thought that Nick had had several times over the last minute.
Back when Irwin had taken the picture, Nick had immediately used his third ability to blind everyone.
At the same time, he had turned into mist while falling to the ground.
Nick knew that Irwin was two levels above him and that he was a Sniper.
Snipers had the most terrifying attacks out of all Extractors, and Nick was quite sure that his Barrier wouldn't be able to block such a shot.
So, his only option had been to turn into mist.
The shot would still hit him, though.
Nick only hoped that Irwin used a precision attack instead of an area attack.
Good Snipers could release both kinds of attacks.
A precision attack was an attack that focused as much power as possible onto a tiny point, which would increase its penetrative power a lot.
Meanwhile, an area attack was the opposite.
Back when Nick had seen Envy's avatar and after he had used the alarm, the entire house in front of Nick exploded.
That had been the doing of a Specialist Sniper from high up on the megastructure.
If the Specialist Sniper had used a precision attack, there would have only been a tiny hole going through the house.
Instead, the surrounding 30 meters had been turned into nothingness.
This was an area attack.
If Irwin had used an area attack, Nick would have died in his fog state.
However, there was no reason for Irwin to use an area attack since that would waste a lot of his power.
Since he was targeting an Extractor, he needed to get through their Barrier, and the best way was to use a precision attack.
With a precision attack, a good part of Nick's mist would have been destroyed, severely weakening and injuring him.
However, Nick would survive.
Then, he would hide and recover before starting his counterattack.
But that never happened.
Instead, Nick didn't feel any attack hit him.
He only saw Carl standing between him and Irwin.
Of course, at that moment, Nick didn't think about any of these things and immediately moved through the dust clouds Carl had created by charging towards Nick at such speeds.
Nick quickly flowed into one of the cracks and hid between two boulders.
At that point, he was already planning his counterattack.
But then, he noticed that Carl and Irwin were fighting, and he watched them from his hiding place.
When Nick saw the half-dead Irwin getting thrown into the middle of the boulder formation, he became skeptical and confused.
Was this some kind of scheme to get Nick to come out of his hiding spot?
But that didn't make any sense.
After all, Carl saved him.
Why would Carl save him just to kill him in a completely convoluted scheme?
When Carl had asked Nick to come out, Nick hesitated.
All of this felt too strange.
Over the years, he had learned again and again that almost all humans were only interested in gorging themselves on others' belongings until their bellies nearly burst.
All the Manufacturers were turning the lives of the normal people into nightmares, and the government was complicit in all of these things just to keep their own asses from receiving any bruises.
Even Julian kept telling Nick again and again that the average human causes more damage to humanity than the average Specter.
Nick fully expected Carl to not be any different from all the other humans.
But then, Carl threw the camera away.
Initially, Nick was sure this was some kind of scheme to lure him out, even though logic dictated that Carl wouldn't do something like that.
It was just that hard for Nick to believe that someone powerful wasn't an irredeemable monster.
But when Nick actually held the camera in his hands and saw the film inside, he was forced to believe Carl.
And when Carl called him out again a bit later, Nick decided to come out.
'He's actually different,' Nick thought, looking at Carl.
'He never wanted to kill me, and even when his own survival was on the line, he followed his own morals.'
'Sure, he believed that I was still there, but that wasn't a certainty.'
Nick had to wrestle hard with his outlook on humans as a whole.
Now that he thought about it, he also remembered Simon Francium and the Champion of Light.
People like those two were the only reason why humanity was still around.
'Nevertheless, the vast majority of humanity is still only interested in themselves and their immediate family,' Nick thought. 'If that weren't true, Aegis wouldn't need to suppress everyone and force them to commit their lives to humanity.'
'However, there are still good people around.'
'And maybe they are not as rare as I actually thought.'
Nick almost felt like none of this was real.
Someone in this world was willing to put their own survival at risk for their morality.
This was so rare and strange that the chances of being in some kind of hallucination created by a Specter were higher.
After a bit, Nick walked towards Carl, who looked at him with a relieved expression.
Nick stopped a couple of steps in front of him.
His blades were not out.
"This almost caused at least one good person to die," Nick said. "But thanks to your efforts, that won't happen."
