Talon Base of Operations.
Outskirts of Cairo, Egypt.
Jack Morrison had been brought here to find the assassin known as the Shrike. A deadly sniper that had been spotted in the area with a high bounty on her head. A man named Hakim was supposedly here, and while Morrison didn't agree with the current state of the country run by mercenaries and war-lords, he needed the money. He needed to keep moving.
Jack stared up at the large gate ahead of him, built into an ornate and ancient entryway painted with a fading light blue and trimmed with detailed hieroglyphs and designs. He leapt towards the wall and bounded up it with no small feat of strength and cleared it with ease, landing behind a weak-willed security guard who received a blunt-force strike from Morrison's pulse rifle. That's when he realized it...
The compound was nearly deserted. He brought his hand to the temple of his visor and clicked the small trigger at the edge of the glass. His vision brightened into shades of red and orange, scanning for signs of life.
"Where is he?" He whispered to himself. The dry heat of the desert air then drained, and a cold chill came down around him.
"Right here, Jack." A grizzled voice spoke the words behind him, but before he could turn his lower back was struck with a visceral pain from a gunshot, and the soldier collapsed to the rough sand below. His body screaming in agony, Morrison's arm began to hug at his side where his fingers felt the gruesome mark. He rolled over and realized he was in the shadow of death itself.
"Always rushing in," The figure taunted. Morrison recognized the voice, almost. But who, who was it?
"I know your every move before you even think it. I always have. I always will." The grim spectre was going to kill him there, Jack knew it.
Stupid. Stupid. The soldier fought through the hurt, the life slipping through his body.
"I've been looking for you since Switzerland."
No. Morrison rolled over onto his back. The figure was as black as a sunless sky, and the mask he wore was narrow and macabre, like the skeletal face of a decayed bird. I do know you.
"Gabriel?" Morrison questioned, moving his arm from the wound to steady himself on the ground. The blood and dirt leaving a mess around his body.
"No, Jack. Not anymore." The figure shook his head, kneeling down at Morrison's boots.
"Look at me, Jack. I want this to be the last thing you remember when your soul leaves your fragile body. I want your dying thoughts to be of me. This is how it should have ended. This right here."
The monster that Jack remembered as Gabriel began to stand up, the barrel of his gun so close to Jack that he could smell the metal and powder.
Jack took a deep breath, one he thought would be his last. He closed his eyes.
I'm ready, then. I'll see you, Ana. Dad, I can't wait to tell you about everything. About how I tried to save the world and failed…you'll be proud.
The creature screamed, and Jack opened his eyes to watch Reyes clutch at his neck. Then a dart hit Jack's arm with a whip through the wind, and he felt his wound begin to close, and a feeling of something not unlike his biotic field device blanketed him in comfort.
"Jack! Get in there!" A voice screamed at him. If it was God, he sure sounded like a she. And she was on his side.
Jack shot up and tackled Gabriel onto the ground, his knuckles cracking in repetition at the man's mask until Gabriel brought his leg up hard into Jack's inner thigh, knocking him off. One strike, Reyes missed. Another, and then the two were trading blows. Morrison still couldn't believe what was happening, but fighting for his life with his hands, on his feet, was better than dying on his back, bleeding out like a dog in the sun.
Reyes stopped suddenly, stepping backwards to avoid Jack's punch and craned his head up to the top of the gate behind them. A figure, cloaked in blue, stood atop the structure with a thin silver sniper rifle in hand. Morrison reached for Reyes but the man dodged and slammed his fist into Jack's body hard enough that the old soldier could feel a crack in his ribs, and he went tumbling back down to the ground.
Reyes materialized behind the sniper, his bones and muscle piecing and stitching themselves back together in a blinding white agony that he was still learning to swallow.
The woman, whipped around and raised a small pistol that fired another dart but Reaper was too fast for that. Too smart for that. He whipped a clawed hand out and caught it, shattering it in his grip with a laugh as the fear spawned in the eyes of the woman he knew in another life as Ana Amari.
"After all this time we've been trying to draw out the sniper bitch that's been sabotaging us," He said striking at Ana who deflected his attack with a thrust of her arm.
"Who would have thought I'd be facing two ghosts today!" Ana said nothing but ducked down with a leg-sweep that knocked Reaper off balance long enough for her to move around him.
She brought her hands to his throat as his heels flirted with the edge of the small structure they battled on.
"I'd rather be a ghost than whatever you are Gabriel. Whatever you've become."
"Of course you would," He choked out, her finger pushing the coarse fabric of his hood into the doughy pulp of the tendons at his neck. He felt the blood already oozing and pooling down to his collar.
"You always took his side."
Ana shoved him, and they both fell. Twisting through the air till gravity hammered Reaper's body straight to the ground below and he could feel his spine shatter and immediately begin to rebuild itself. He gasped, and kicked himself up to personally tear Ana's other eye from the socket, but she was fast. She grabbed his mask and ripped it off, bits of the muscle around his face coming with it.
The woman he once loved looked at him in disgust and fright.
"Oh my God. What happened to you?!" She screamed, covering her mouth.
"He did this to me, Ana. They left me to become…this." Reyes wanted to cover himself, as the sunlight even seared the mess of an exposed visage he had. He grabbed his mask from the ground, and held it close at his chin. His teeth were beginning to bleed now, with no lips to cover them.
"They left you to die…they left me to suffer…" He closed his eyes, and felt himself once again dematerialize.
"Never forget that." He was gone now, evaporating into the sky.
Morrison watched the back of the woman's head as her hood fell to her shoulders letting a main of silken silver hair fall out loosely down her neck.
She turned, and Jack knew he had to be dead. He died earlier. That's the only way to explain…
"I should have killed you, Jack." Ana Amari said to him, walking over to extend a wrapped and gloved hand from her padded coat.
"Ana…" He tried to speak.
"I've been staking this place out for days. I was so close to-"
"I thought you were dead." Morrison whispered. Still unable to comprehend what was happening. The woman he hadn't seen in more than 20 years. The woman he mourned every night, was standing before him, aged like fine clay with only a few cracks across her copper-toned skin.
"Just like the rest of the world thought you were." She said, her mouth struggling not to smile.
"You're too hard-headed to die, aren't you Jack?"
The hole in Jack's heart that was attempting to correct itself then realized it was spurned. The soldier clenched his jaw, staring at the woman.
"This is my war, Ana. And you gave it…you gave me up, or you'd have told me where you were. That you were alive…"
Ana took two wide steps towards him and ripped his mask off to replace it with a hard slap across his cheek.
"You have no idea what I went through, Jack! I failed everyone. I failed our team that day, I failed you, I failed my daughter. I figured the world would be better with me as a ghost. A phantom that couldn't ruin anything else. Did I make the right choice? I have no idea. But don't you dare tell me I gave you up. I don't give a damn about your war. Your little crusade to play in this world where you aren't needed anymore…but I care about you, Jack. Dammit, I still care." She sighed, and the look on her eye softened.
"I still love you, Jack." She held his face in her palms. "I fear that I always will." Ana smirked.
"Let's get out of here before the cleaning crew shows up," Morrison leaned in to kiss her. A familiar taste that he missed and had yearned for all of his life, even before he'd ever met her.
He turned around to head to the gate, but was stopped by Ana grabbing his arm to stop him.
"What are you going to do when there's no more battles to fight? No more wars to try and die in?"
Morrison picked his mask back up and slipped it on, feeling the visor vibrate and light up again across his vision.
"I'm a soldier, Ana. Our war is never over."
