The world didn't need heroes anymore.
It'd been a bitter pill to swallow.
Overwatch's downfall was proof. Nobody had given a damn. Oh there were investigations and interrogations and other sorts of "-ations", but there was no great rally from the general public to pledge its support to Overwatch.
The team was disgraced, and its members considered at best armed and dangerous, and at worst terrorists.
He believed himself to be in the latter category. His vigilante persona was, anyhow.
Jack Morrison had died in that Headquarters explosion, and Soldier 76 had been first spotted months after that.
He was pursuing leads. To get the monsters responsible to pay for ruining Overwatch from inside and out.
A Viskhar warehouse in the Middle East had some of the answers he needed.
Under the cover of darkness, he struck.
Stealth wasn't his speciality, but big guns and loud explosions were. He was looking for a list. To get it, he had to reach the main computer and download it.
Sure, he expected it to be encrypted and password-locked and laiden with all kinds of cybersecurity boobytraps, but one step at a time.
He disposed of the patrols that rushed to his position with blasts from his pulse rifle and flashes of the Tactical Visor. Gaining access to the inner compound, he sprinted past guards and sentry turrets, squeezing off rounds whenever he could.
Locating the main computer was no problem.
Dealing with it was. The monotone AI was an uncooperative piece of junk, so he had to resort to plain old robbery.
Take the hard drive for himself. Hopefully it was the right one.
Eh, he was banking on it.
Soldier 76 smirked beneath his mask. Viskhar really needed to learn how to scrub their drives clean properly.
Some would call it a lucky break. He called it intel-gathering. He put his fist through the plasma-TV sized monitor, and sprayed the keyboard to shreds.
He never liked Viskhar anyway. Shady bastards.
Satisfied, he hefted his pulse rifle and made for the exit. Time for an extraction.
Dr Angela Ziegler was camping it up in some fancy hospital in Zürich. It turned out she had retained her fighting spirit. Soldier 76 knocked her Caduceus blaster aside, slammed his cupped palm over her mouth, and buried the barrel of a pistol under her breast.
"Quiet," he ordered. "Scream, and you get a bullet for your trouble. Nod if you understand." Her eyes blazed with hatred as she reluctantly complied.
"Good. Now I'm gonna take my hand away and you're gonna stay quiet. Speak only when spoken to."
"Soldier 76," she spat the name out like it was a curse. "What do you want?"
"Information, doc. About a patient."
"That is highly unethetical. Doctor-patient confidentiality is not something I will compromise," argued Ziegler, defiantly staring him down despite the gun pointed in her face.
"Give the Hippocratic Oath a rest, doc. Do or die." Her upper lip curled, baring her teeth in a mute snarl. She eyed him up and down.
"With conditions like that... what choice do I have?"
"Absolutely none. Now tell me about what you did with Gabriel Reyes after that attack on your HQ."
She did. He remembered every scrap of info she gave. At the end, he inclined his head thoughtfully. "Much obliged, doc."
Then he dropped a pellet and bolted as plumes of smoke filled up Mercy's office along with the sound of her coughs.
Breaking and entering. A regular occurence for the silver-haired guttural growler.
Gibralter was the latest to get the Soldier 76 treatment. He had heard about the recall. He'd figured it was a trap. Former Overwatch were dying left and right, what if it was a ploy by the killer?
So he went to investigate himself. And he got caught by a gorilla with the help of a meddling AI.
"Hn. Not part of the plan," admitted 76, hands lifted in surrender. He was cornered. The only thing to do was appeal to Winston.
"Then what was the plan? Steal supplies? Download our database? You don't look like one of Talon's, but you are still a criminal," Winston said.
"I wanted to see if the recall was legit."
"Are you considering joining? I'm not sure if there's room for a man as... ruthless and destructive as you are, Soldier 76."
"Nah, I work better alone. I know about the killer targeting ex-Overwatch. I thought that this could be a trick."
Winston sobered up. "You're interested in that. Why?" Soldier 76 felt like he was being flattened by the calculating gaze Winston sent his way.
"I want justice, for the men and women that are gone. You can help me. Here." He produced the stolen drive, and waved it in the air.
He placed it on the floor. It slid across over, bumping against Winston's foot. He picked the object up, turned it over in his hand.
"That has a list of people responsible for the attack on Overwatch Headquarters. I expect it's gonna be tough to crack. Happy decoding. As soon as you have the list, contact me."
Soldier 76 turned, stooping to reclaim his rifle.
Satya Vaswani received the message from her superiors early one morning. "Capture this man, and interrogate him. Leave the rest to us." She regarded the spinning image of the man. So he was the one creating mayhem for her company.
"Is that understood, Symmetra?"
"Of course," she assured smoothly.
The data-burst specified that 'Soldier 76' was lurking in a safehouse up north. An abandoned Watchpoint. Long disused and in a state of desrepair. The sight of it made the architect inside her bubble up to the surface, but she swiftly quashed it.
It wasn't the moment to ponder modern designs for an out-of-date facility.
"They sent a suit to do a soldier's job," he sneered at her from the shadows.
"You've caused my employers quite enough trouble. Make this easy on yourself. Come quietly," offered Satya. She reloaded her Photon Projector.
"Trouble? Interrupting kidnappings is causing trouble? Your precious corporation is tearing families apart. Stealing children in the middle of the night."
She snorted to convey her disbelief at the accusation. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Have you ever seen a family divided because of the selfishness of others? I have. In my case, you could even say I made it happen." He glanced down below from his vantage point.
She was checking all the corners of the multi-storey room.
"Those people you killed. They had families, too," Satya retorted. Some of them, anyway.
"Yeah well, they made their choices, and I made mine." The man sounded mournful, his regret underscored by his gruff demeanour. She waited and listened. Nothing for a few seconds.
Then faint beeps. Steady. Pulsating. Her eyes widened behind her holographic visor.
Symmetra teleported out of there before the building was blown to smithereens.
Winston had come through. Soldier 76 began tracking down the schemers in suits and shadows. Many of them were already dead.
Offed by assassins.
Loose ends being tied up. That presented a problem.
As he burned through the series of names, he noticed a pattern. The assassins were getting to his quarries before he was.
He presumed that until he learned a crucial fact.
It was one assassin.
Just one. Talon's best. The Widowmaker.
He gritted his teeth so hard he thought they might shatter in his mouth. The sniper was ten steps ahead of him this entire time.
A diversion was the only way to pull it off. He didn't want the Widowmaker's targets.
He wanted the Widowmaker.
Who else was to assist him on the mission? When Winston suggested who he had in mind, Soldier 76 wasn't thrilled.
If there's anyone that could cop on to his identity, it was Tracer. The chipper Brit was not all that enthusiastic about working with him, but she needn't worry.
It was mutual. They'd gone over the plan to intercept Widowmaker, and at first everything went according to it.
She showed up at the expected time, and eliminated the security on the rooftops. He had to physically hold Tracer back as they listened to the cries over the radio.
She ripped free from his grasp and wheeled round to face him.
"Can't spook her off," he responded to her dirty look. "There's no telling when we could catch her next."
"What sort of heroes are we, to let those good men die just to catch one Widowmaker?"
He angled his blood-red glare at her. "Hate to break it to ya, but I ain't a hero."
She folded her arms with a huff. "Should've bloody realised that."
They moved in to intercept, and the pale sniper simpered at the both of them. "'Ello, cherie," Widowmaker called out to Tracer. Her gaze slid over to 76. "And you brought a friend along."
Tracer grimaced. "He's no friend of mine, luv."
She blinked towards the Talon agent. The fight was on.
The triggering of a venom mine had Soldier 76 scrambling away to escape the toxic fumes. He hacked up severe coughs.
"She's getting away," he roared at Tracer, who'd stopped to check how bad it was.
"But - "
"I'll catch up. Go, Tracer." Oxton zipped out of his sight. He threw down an invention of Mercy's, and the biotic emitter did its duty. He could breathe easier now than he did 10 seconds ago.
Overtaking Widowmaker, he and Tracer brought her down. It was past time he got answers.