When Stephanie Malik took the underground railway back to Royal City Castle, Diana List, who had been waiting for some time, found her immediately. She held an operation report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The rebel Avengers squad led by Steve Rogers and Silver Sablinova's Wild Legion had completed their mission, but it had not been resolved perfectly. Twelve Albanian and Syrian extremists had been killed, three seriously wounded and sent to the hospital, and one lightly wounded and taken to the interrogation room.
Yet none of that was Stephanie Malik's problem to handle. She was responsible for the five refugees who had died during the operation and the two civilians accidentally injured during the rescue. More precisely, it was not the disposition of the survivors, but the public opinion incident caused by the dead. The current gun-control and anti-gang operations saw no shortage of shootouts every day, but in terms of publicity value, the dead mattered more than the living. If someone who should have died survived instead, there was no news value in it. But no one would be punished over this, not even Steve Rogers or Silver Sablinova, who should have resolved the incident perfectly. Their job was to deal with extremists, not rescue civilians. Even if they believed the latter was their job rather than the former, reality was not a movie where every ending could be perfect.
It was already quitting time at Royal City Castle. The Emperor had vanished long ago after seeing her off at the Royal City underground station, and it was easy to imagine how irritated Stephanie Malik was when she received the report. "Steve Rogers has lodged a formal protest." Diana List delivered another aggravating piece of news. "He tried to stop the Coast Guard forces from taking away