"Guys, you should come and see this." Fareeha said from the cockpit of the dropship.
Quite quickly, the rest of the squad made their way up to the cockpit. And as soon as they did, they saw what Fareeha meant.
In the distance, at what was likely their destination, smoke was rising up. And a lot of it.
"I'm beginning to see why we had to cancel the anniversary for this." Ana commented out loud.
"Doesn't look like anything we could afford to put off, I agree." Hanzo responded, though without taking his eyes off the smoke.
For a few seconds, everyone just quietly watched as the source of unnerving amounts of smoke slowly came closer and closer.
"Alright everyone." 76 broke the silence once they were close enough. As he walked back into the main area of the ship, everyone else followed.
"As it looks, the sudden call for support we recieved wasn't as unfounded as we'd thought." The old soldier began while eveyone else took a seat. "So far, the only thing that's clear, is that... something happened here. Who, why, or even what exactly is still up in the air. And therefore, tread forward with extreme caution. We are here to investigate, first and foremost, not to open fire on the first rat we see. Remember that."
"And don't take any unnecessary risks." Ana added from the sidelines.
"And that too." 76 quickly agreed.
Everyone gathered nodded. "ETA around 3 minutes." 76 quickly said, before he went over and sat down next to Ana.
As soon as he had sat down, the old soldier sighed. "I could swear, sometimes it feels like nothing has really changed." He said, his voice sounding unusually tired.
"And is that a good thing or a bad thing?" The egyptian sniper asked. The question itself was serious, but there was still a playful undertone to it.
"Depends on the situation." 76 answered quite bluntly.
Ana quickly chuckled. "I see why you were the first one chosen to not be a part of the party."
Though 76 quickly grunted and looked away at the remark, Ana knew he didn't take it as hard as he was letting on.
"What are you looking at?" The old soldier suddenly asked. Ana followed his look, until she also saw Fareeha, with a rather large projected screen in front of her.
"I'm just following the celebration as it's shown on TV." The egyptian quickly explained.
"Just be sure to be ready when we land." 76 quickly warned.
"I'm ready now." Fareeha nonchalantly answered without taking her eyes off the screen.
76 leaned back in his chair, defeated, and decided to just fall in small talk with Ana. However, as they did so, Hanzo noticed something.
"For watching a celebration, you're expression is more akin to trying to solve a riddle." The archer noted.
"I'm just nervous, that's all." The egyptian answered. She then quickly added "You can also call me paranoid."
"No, it's well-founded." Hanzo denied.
"How so?" Zarya now joined in on the conversation.
"For the past weeks, there hasn't been one person who didn't know where most of us would be right now." Hanzo obliged in explaining.
"It would be beyond easy to set a trap there, despite the security." Fareeha summarized while looking at the russian with quite serious eyes.
"I see." Zarya plainly responded. "Then-"
"Quiet." 76 suddenly broke the conversation. "We're here."
Everyone immediately silenced themselves and readied their weapons, as 76 went over to the hatch on the side of the ship.
The rest of the team quickly gathered behind him.
A rumble going through the ship signaled that they had landed. And the hatch opened soon after.
"What... happened here?" 76 asked in disbelief as his weapon fell to his side. No one answered as they were all in shock over what they were seeing.
To say the hanger, which had apparently previously belonged to Talon, was in chaos would be an understatement. In several places, flames were spreading and consuming the surrounding area. Thankfully, the ceiling was high enough for the smoke to not be dangerous.
Apart from the fire, the very walls and floor of the station were bent and crooked, somewhere even crumbled like paper, with bullet holes piercing almost everywhere the eye went. But that wasn't the worst. The worst was the bodies.
The hangar was littered with bodies of various Talon operatives and some scientists. Some were missing some limps, some were just torsos, and some were somehow lodged into the walls. Almost all of the bodies were also bent in some sort of unnatural, morbid way. Either the arms were folded backwards, the legs were bending forward at the knees or some were even folded in complete halfs.
Still in disbelief, 76 took a step into the base and was immediately greeted with a splashing sound.
Looking down, the old soldier saw the fires reflected in pools of blood seemingly everywhere, giving the entire hangar an eerie look.
"Never in my entire life have I..." Ana started as she also stepped out. But she quickly gave up on finding words to describe what she was seeing.
"A massacre would be an understatement." Hanzo noted from the other side of 76.
"What could have possibly-" Zarya was about to ask, when she was silenced by 76 raising a hand. Now quiet, the team was only met with the sound of crackling fires. And a small cough.
Turning right, the team saw one of the bodies lying near an open door was still writhing in pain. Alive.
Ignoring how every step threw more drops of blood on their clothes, the team rushed over to the survivor.
Once they reached the woman, 76 immeidately recognized the orange, blood-soaked hair and sharp face.
"Moira." He exclaimed while kneeling down next to her. Her face was lying on it's right side.
Upon hearing her name, Moira, seemingly with all of her strength, turned her head. Fareeha let out a gasp.
The metal plate she had once had on her face had been ripped off, leaving her flesh and blood-veins exposed. And upon further examination, her metal nails and the augments along her arms had also been ripped out, opening for even more blood.
As Ana knelt down on her other side, Moira looked up at her.
"He was a mistake... even bigger than Reyes." She mumbled in between coughing up blood and trying desperately to get some air into her lungs.
Suddenly, her eyes locked onto 76 and with her last energy, she said "If you find him, run. Forget your pride and... run."
"Who?" Ana tried asking as calmly as possible.
Moira turned towards the egyptian sniper and looked at her for a few seconds. And then she fell limp. She was dead.
The team was silent the following few seconds, no one daring to say anything after that ominous warning.
Eventually, 76 picked up his rifle. "Come." He said as he stood up and everyone followed his eyes. The hallway in front of them was just as ruined and blood-soaked as the hangar. Whoever did this came from there.
With a quick nod from Ana, the team began their journey through the hall.
As they continued forward, the team eventually stumbled upon a place where the lamps where so soaked in blood, the light was purely red for a little while.
"Jesus." Fareeha mumbled to herself at the sight.
No one responded. The team simply pressed forward while constantly on their guard. And they continued like that for quite a while.
After a few silent minutes, Hanzo suddenly stopped. When the rest turned towards him, they saw what had caught his attention: A large burnt area on the wall.
The archer carefully touched the area with the edge of his bow, and as expected, a corpse burnt beyond recognition fell down from it.
While the others gathered around the body, likely trying to figure out why this one was so much more wounded than the others, 76 saw something on the ground.
"Here." The old soldier said. Showing it to the others, it was the broken pieces of Reaper's mask.
"She did say whoever did this was a bigger mistake than him." Ana pointed out.
"Though I never would have expected this." 76 admitted. "Must have been a hard-fought battle."
When no one responded to his remark, the old soldier turned to the rest of the hallway. "The trail leads here. Let's go."
He immediately began to move, forcing the others to move as well. They slowly made their way through the rest of the base, encountering no further signs that were out of the ordinary. For this bloodbath anyway.
Eventually, the team reached the end of one of the corridors they had followed. In front of them was an open entrance to what looked like some sort of control-room overlooking a testing-area. The door laid on the floor in front of it. In another pool of blood.
When 76 stepped on the door, several squishy sounds could be heard from underneath. He decided to ignore it and went inside.
Once the entire team was inside, the old soldier took a single step forward. A sudden, sharp sound from Fareeha stopped him dead in his tracks.
"What was that?" 76 asked, but he didn't get a response. What little of Fareeha's face was visible under her helmet had an expression of surprise.
"Sorry." She eventually responded. "It was just the anniversary. There was an incredibly loud sound from it." She then explained.
"I have a bad feeling about this." 76 mumbled to himself, hoping none of the others heard. "Fareeha, keep us updated on what happends to them. The rest of you, this seems to be the source of the massacre. See if you can find anything."
With either a swift 'yes' or 'understood' from everyone, 76 turned back towards the broken windows overlooking the test-area.
The glass shards were all lying in the control room, which meant the breach came from the other side. Sure enough, some sort of test subject had escaped Talon.
"Still, I wonder just what kind of things they were doing with whoever that was." The old soldier kept mumbling to himself. A habit he had started to pick up.
"Found something!" Hanzo exclaimed rather abrubtly, shaking 76 out of his thoughts.
"What?" Ana asked while everyone gathered around the archer.
"It looks like an archieve of security recordings." The archer responded while keeping his gaze focused on the screen.
This immediately caught everyone's interest.
"Can you play them?" 76 didn't hesitate to ask.
"Unfortunately, it would seem almost all of the recorders were damaged during whatever happened here. However, if we watch the last thing they managed to pick up, it should be possible to retrace what happened here." Hanzo quickly answered.
"Do that. And start from in here." 76 ordered.
Without answering, Hanzo dug through the recordings for a few seconds. Eventually, he found what he was looking for and a large projected screen appeared.
For the first few seconds, everything seemed normal. But suddenly, things took a twist.
Sounds of screams, equipment being broken and flesh being torn apart quickly filled the entire room.
After just a few minutes, the screen turned to a solid static. Hanzo quickly found the next tape and played it.
Halfway through it, Fareeha suddenly exclaimed a "Wait." As Hanzo paused the video, everyone turned towards her.
"You... should see this." The egyptian said, her voice seemingly trembling. Before anyone had a chance to ask, she brought up her wrist and following the pressing of a few buttons, another projected screen appeared. The anniversary. Live.
"Oh god." 76 said under his breath as he almost didn't believe what his eyes were telling him.
After a few seconds, he turned towards Fareeha. "We have to warn them. NOW!"
"But there's no guarantee the signal will go thro-" "I don't care!" 76 cut her off. He was desperate. Incredibly so. "We have to try, or else they could get killed! And if we can't reach them, then we'll just have to fly over there ourselves!"
"Shimada." The soldier then said. "Keep watching the videos. If you find anything of use, say so. If not, then just download them as quickly as possible!"
With a swift nod, Hanzo went to work.
"The rest of you, try to get through until he's done. If you get through, give it me!" He then ordered everyone else. With more nods, the team began trying to save their unaware comrades.
Totally unprepared for the stranger's willingness to fight them, Winston and Lena just stood and watched as he made his way up to the stage.
Not only Lena and Winston, but the crowd also just stood in silence and watched as he walked up to the stage. There, he stepped straight up.
Now on equal footing, the stranger took a quick glance over at the rest of the team who was watching in stunned silence. Angela Ziegler, Torbjorn Lindholm, his daughter Brigitte, Hana Song, Reinhardt Wilhelm, Lucio Correia dos Santos, Mei-Ling Zhou, Jesse McCree, Genji Shimada, and finally, Winston and Lena.
With his intense gaze locked on the duo, the stranger reached up and threw his cap towards them, revealing short, unusually white hair.
"Well?" He asked. "Were we going to fight, or were your threats as empty as your promises?"
For a few seconds, a tense silence filled the entire area, no one moving a muscle. Suddenly, a voice cut through the silence.
"Al? A-alexander?" The voice asked. The stranger turned in its direction and met the questioning gaze of the blue-eyed girl from earlier.
"Hey Nat." The stranger, apparently named Alexander, softly responded with a smile. "Don't worry, we'll catch up later."
With a confirming nod from Nat, Alexander turned back to the duo. "Still as slow as ever. Perhaps you just need some motivation."
In just a few swift moves, Alexander removed the brown jacket and threw it towards the duo, exposing the hole in the back. As Winston picked it up, he noticed something further. Around the hole, blood was quite clearly present.
"There." Alexander taunted. "Aren't you going to enact your oh so important justice on me now?"
"You killed someone? For this?" Winston asked, for some reason in disbelief.
"I was in a hurry." Alexander shugged it off like it was nothing. His eyes, which had previously been looking everywhere, suddenly locked onto Lena and Winston. "In a hurry to get here. Otherwise, I might have missed this glorious opportunity!"
As he spoke, Alexander slowly made his way towards the duo. It wasn't hard to imagine what he'd try to do when he reached them.
"Hey!" Angela suddenly called out from the back of the stage as he grapped one of Alexander's arms. He immediately stopped. "I think you should calm down and just leave before this escalates into something worse."
"And what would that be?" Alexander asked as he slowly turned towards her. "Would it be that someone got hurt? Would be that some of the scenery got destroyed? Or would it be that your precious public image would shatter?"
"What?" Angela asked back, honest to god confused.
"Well, it doesn't matter." Alexander commented. His eyes then suddenly locked onto Angela like they had on Winston and Lena. "They'll all happen anyway."
Then, with unexpected strength, Alexander suddenly reached forward and grapped Angela around the throat.
The swiss doctor, surprised, instinctively tried to grap his arm and pry it away. But aside from feeling weird, it was completely immovable.
"Let her go!" Lena shouted at Alexander as she charged at him. However, she was hit by something and fell back. When she sat back up, she couldn't see anything on Alexander that could've hit her.
"Wait for your turn." Alexander said calmly, yet still with malice.
Turning back to Angela, who was starting to make some unpleasant sounds, Alexander smiled. "This is for-"
BANG
"NOOOO!" Nat shouted as her brother let go of Angela. He then slowly fell back, his left eye and the area around it utterly blown out by McCree's Peacekeeper.
A/N: Sorry about another cliffhanger. But the reason I do this, is because then this chapter won't be overloaded with too many different things. And it will also give me the opportunity to properly focus on the next chapter and provide you with something I'm proud of. Thanks for understanding and until next time.