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All roads led to Zurich.
Jack Morrison, former Strike Commander, former vigilante, former…far too many things to list, was breathing hard as he crested the hill that would look down into the valley where once Overwatch had shone like a captured star. Reaching the summit he paused, squinting against the sun as he looked down at the place that once upon a time had been his home, his dream, his future. Now, he could barely make out the barricaded ruins of the old headquarters, reclaimed as much of it had been by the creeping wilds that spread evermore into the places where the dwindling population no longer walked. From up here it was impossible to spot movement, and he had no idea if the barricades had been breached. Most likely, or though more likely by desperate humans, or Omnics searching for materials, than the dead. At least that was what he hoped.
Why are we back here Jack? Gabriel asked.
“Because it’s the closest thing to home that I can get to,” Jack replied, flinching at the sound of his own voice in the quiet. His voice was more gravel than anything these days, and he wasn’t sure if anyone would be able to understand him if he did stumble upon a pocket of humanity. Gabriel understood him well enough, he always had, and he cast a smile to his side. “I’m getting to old to keep running.”
Finally, listening to me Jackie-boy? A loaded question, and one that Jack wasn’t going to get into while he was out in the open, exposed to any hungry eyes. It was an age-old argument, and he doubted leaving it unresolved until they were back within whatever shelter Zurich might offer now, would make much a difference. There was a huff to his side, but Gabriel mercifully didn’t pursue the issue, leaving Jack in peace to scan their surroundings. His visor cast the world in weak red, the feedback fuzzy at the edges now. Too many close calls had rendered the tech all but useless, and he wore it now more out of familiarity than anything. That and to avoid the red that bathed too many parts of this world.
Satisfied that they were for alone for now, he fell back into the hand signals that he had memorised decades ago, faltering for a moment as he realised the wraps around his wrist were crusted green and yellow and threatening to fall off. He averted his eyes, even as he reached out to fix it.
Jack…
“It’s nothing to worry about,” he snapped at Gabriel, tightening the wrap before moving out.
A small, distant part of him yearned just to follow the main road. The part of him that knew that this was a one-way trip, the last sentimental homecoming of an old fool. Instinct, and muscle memory had him skirting around buildings, and picking a circuitous route through the ruined city that lay between him and his goal.
Here, the full impact of Moira’s renegade corruption was visible everywhere he looked. What had once been a living, vibrant city, was now a decaying corpse, eating itself alive. Even in the bright sunlight, death hung over the place like a visible being, tendrils wrapped around buildings painted with red and bullet holes, charred with fire, where in the early days people had thought the corruption could be driven out by human means. Here and there the smell that permeated every human dwelling these days was worse, a thick miasma of rot and decay, and amongst the red he could make out remnants of those fortunate souls who had had escaped undeath. As well as those who had risen and died again, those bodies marked by swirling purple and black markings, that had blossomed in many cases into some monstrous amalgamation of fungi and foliage, a deadly beauty springing from the corruption.
Beauty, Jack? Your standards are slipping…
“Oh, be quiet,” he muttered, and immediately froze. Listening to see if his voice had drawn any attention, even as he shot a glare to his side.
Sorry.
When nothing stirred in response to his words, Jack moved in. It was slow going, each step precisely placed. While this place held no signs of recent occupation, either from other survivors, or from the corrupted, he had learned the hard way that appearances could be deceptive.
Gabriel on the ground, greyish flesh torn open, blood and something dark…writhing nanites fighting to patch him together, blood bubbling and gurgling in places it shouldn’t.
He shook his head, glanced to the side and moved on. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. As they picked their way through the ruin of the world, he fidgeted with the wraps on his wrist, nose wrinkling as he caught the smell coming from it. The mental clock that had been ticking down in the back of his head for the last week, beginning to speed up, and he had to fight the urge to match it with his physical pace.
Eventually they broke free of the city, and now Jack did take the road. There was no hiding here, and a stubborn part of him wanted to walk into Zurich one last time. His departure had been all slinking shadows, clouded with lies and half-truths, he would at least have his return in the open. Not that there was anyone left to witness that mattered beside Gabriel, who scoffed at him as he took to the open road and moved towards their old headquarters.
Still playing at Strike Commander, Jackie-boy?
“The ghost of one maybe,” Jack retorted, and he didn’t pause this time, even as his voice rang out even louder in the quiet.
It was silent here. The last time he had been here, the world had been full of brimstone and falling rubble, a roaring in his ears that had nothing to do with the destruction of the headquarters. Now, he couldn’t even hear birds in the countryside that stretched out either side, and had consumed swathes of the road as though it could erase all of them. He wasn’t sure if any birds remained. They had been researching at one point, but that base had fallen silent, and then another and another, as the survivors dwindled, taking whatever answers they’d found with them. Jack hoped something had survived, that there would be some witness to the world that would come.
So morbid, Jack.
“Can you blame me?” Jack asked, not looking towards the taunt. Focused on moving forward, on the looming remains of the old Headquarters. He wasn’t even sure why he had come here. Nostalgia? Not really, whatever good memories remained of this place, had died with the souls they were connected to, his friends, former and current long gone; comrades laid low by an affliction none of them had been ready for. The very few that remained were scattered, seeing out the end of their days in whatever manner seemed best to them. Absolution? That was a dream long forgotten. He had never found the answers he’d been looking for, the proof that might have lifted some of the blame from his shoulders; and who would he ask it from now.
Me?
“Would you give it?”
The silence itself was an answer and he moved onwards. There was sporadic evidence of fighting here now, but it was old. Fresh plant growth over ashy, charred ground. Grass growing around rusted remains of Omnics, some that had fallen to human weapons, others with the speckled, black almost mold-like substance that was how the corruption took them. A final stand, he realised, pausing for a moment to read the signs. They had been retreating up the road, all facing the way he had come from. Who were they fighting? Humans or the afflicted? Or each other? Any of the three was possible, but it meant the base had seen activity at some time since the affliction. It might be empty now, it might not.
Spoiling for a fight, Jack? You’ve barely got any ammo left, and…
“You were the one hellbent on fighting everything,” Jack replied.
Sometimes it was the only way.
“Sometimes,” Jack admitted. “But, not much point fighting now is there?”
Have you come to die here Jack? Going to go out with a whisper?
Jack didn’t reply. Anything he said would incriminate him at this point, and he was too tired to fight with Gabriel over this, his eyes settling on his wrist for a moment, before looking ahead once more. “I’m just going home.” Home. Once upon a time home had been a sprawling farm building, with wide-open fields and corn the colour of sun… then it had been base after base, a bunk and what trinkets he could collect, then it had been their quarters, belongings mingled together… Now home was a memory more than a dream, a delusion that persisted even in the face of the end of the world.
Sentimental fool.
He couldn’t argue and didn’t try. Instead, he picked up the pace, aware that time was trickling by and not wanting to be out in the open when darkness fell, even if something worse waited in the shelter of the base.
The barricade had been ripped open. Barbed wire and metal fences leaning and sprawling across the road, and what remained standing now almost entirely covered in climbing foliage, creating a living shield around the grounds. The gates were off their hinges, and warped in places, as though someone had once used them as a barricade against a frenzied horde; and the ground on the other side showed it had been a doomed attempt. Remains, human and omnic had been picked clean by very different scavengers, now slowly disappearing in green; and Jack doubted many living had made it out of this fight, and his shoulders slumped as he stared across the grounds at where the toppled remains of that long-hated statue lay, and beyond to the half-levelled remains of the base.
If there was anyone waiting for him here, he doubted they were alive and he glanced down at his pulse rifle. The weapon had seen him through more fights than he cared to count, and it was now barely functional, dented and worn by long years of fight. A single clip of ammo all that he had to his name. He had turned the tides with less before, but…
Slowly, he checked it one last time. Hands moving easily through the practiced motions, even as his wrist throbbed with pain. Satisfied it would fire if needed, he cleared a space in the vegetation and set it down, alongside the last precious biotic cannister he had scrounged a few towns back. Neither would serve him any further, and perhaps this was a foolish gesture, as he had no idea if there was anyone left to follow in his footsteps, as he couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a fellow survivor.
What are you doing Jack? Giving up?
“You already know this is the end,” Jack muttered, loosely covering the gun and cannister with the displaced vegetation. Hoping that if there was anyone else alive, they would find it if they needed it. Maybe, just maybe, he would help someone survive a little longer, and if not… well he wouldn’t be around to worry about it, at least not as himself. “It was the end weeks ago…”
Weeks ago, when Gabriel had stilled, body open to the elements, nanites slowly stilling as the damage overrode what they were able to repair. Week ago, when Jack on his knees next to the man he had loved and loathed for most of his life, blind to the danger before it had launched itself at him. Teeth rending the flesh of wrist, sowing the seeds of the affliction he had dodged for so long.
His body had held out better than most, the last vestiges of the serum fighting it off as long as possible. But, it was spreading, he could feel it as though someone had poured liquid fire through his veins. His wrist, rotting beneath the wraps was the epicentre, but now it seeped up his arm, curling around his shoulder and down into his chest. When he had peeked that morning, it was gathering above his heart, and each breath seared through him, and he knew that there would be no surviving this.
That was why he had returned to Zurich, to this last place where he had been happy with Gabriel. With the place where he was supposed to have died once. It was already his tomb in one way, so he might as well make it official; and even as the pain stole his breath got to his feet and looked up at the base for a moment. Then slowly, he unwrapped his wrist, letting the filthy wraps drop to the ground – a warning he supposed, for any who followed, and looked down. He tried not to focus on the bite, and the necrotic flesh spreading from it, his hand barely able to move now; instead he looked at the ring that he had never stopped wearing and glanced to his side, to the empty spot that now fell silent.
“I’m coming home, Gabriel.”