Prologue Death That Breathes Life

The way of Talon is all I've ever known.

Through all that I've learned, I've heard tales and legends on how I had a life before that of Talon, but of course the organization, especially our Leader, has made sure to drill into me that all of those are lies.

Of course, all legends are made through wispy webs of truths.

Although, I know better than anyone to defy the rules of Talon. If He says they're lies, then that's all they ever will be. You learn that the hard way when you first join. They'll hurt you. Torture you. To the point of near death.

No.

Not death.

Only to point where you wish you were dead.

Soon, though. Soon you realize that Talon is the only way people will truly be set free. I remember the day of my first kill. Months and months set up after Talon had fashioned me into the great killer I would become. The way I watched the life fade away out of his eyes. It was and only will be the last time I ever felt alive.

At least, that was what I believed.

Funny how death is what brings me life once again.

I never knew His real name, even if I did, it was from a time that no longer belonged to me. We all knew Him as Reaper. A man literally brought back from the grave; a trail of smoke always following His non-existent footsteps; an ethereal being, whose mutilated structure was always hidden behind a bone white mask. It's a surprise how it managed to stay as white as it was, considering the blood He has shed. The massacres He has put Himself in the middle of. They say He absorbs the life of those He kills, keeping Himself immortal. No one knows how He became the way He did. They're all too scared to ask.

I've always assumed. Assumed that He and I are the same. I assumed He inflected the same pain that He experienced on to me. I don't remember much. Just flashes of searing hot pain, days without water, weeks without eating, months of forcing my eyes open to watch tortuous things. Things that to this day, I can't even talk about. He was the one to watch over me, to make sure that I was crafted into the perfect second in command. I was handpicked, maybe by chance or maybe by fate, to become the deadliest shot in the world, to coincide with the deadliest man in the world.

Let it be known, I don't really believe in fate. If there was a reason for the things that have been done for me, it was not because the hands of the universe moved me to those places. Unlike Him. He always talked about how He was created for greatness, that fate brought Him here to rid the world of them.

Them. Overwatch. They're the reason why we hide in fear. Fear of ourselves. Fear that we'll never amount to the greatest thing that humanity can ever achieve. The feeling of being alive.

You may be alive, but are you truly? People walk around as empty husks, droning out the bores of life day to day. Alive, but not truly living, just existing. One of our missions is to eradicate the Omnics that curse our world, an ironic simile to how humanity is today; however, I know how it feels to actually be alive, granted the only way to achieve it is through the winning shot of the kill, but I died long before my time at talon.

Humans eventually revert back to the way they're supposed to be. They proved that by instantly turning against the program that was trying to "help" them. They turned against the very people who force fed them their fears. Proving that soon, very soon, we will soon liberate the world for what it really is.

A slaughterhouse of mayhem.

Although, first, we have to rid the world of those who think they're helping humanity. They ran into hiding for a long time, but when Reaper went to find information on where they were hiding, he accidentally jumpstarted the restart of Overwatch, which was rapidly gaining numbers, much to the chagrin of the United Nations, and Talon, but it makes the hunt all the more exciting.

Nothing excites spiders like me more than the hunt and going in for the kill.

My name was Amélie Lacroix. Widowmaker is the name of the life I will always lead, for the woman that you once knew, is long gone.