I wanted to dish this chapter out soon as I could since Finals will be starting for me next week and I'm pretty sure that I'll be incapacitated from studying and praying that I didn't screw myself over for the year! Forgot to mention this, but Monday was a huge day for the full release of Overwatch to the public, hope at least some of you guys got a copy cause I sure didn't XD *Crying inside*. Also, I wanted to say something very special to all of you amazing people...last Wednesday, over a THIRTEEN HUNDRED read the first part of Project OCE! I'm blown away by these numbers and hope that they continue to rise as more people become interested in my work. Now, for some Reviewing Reviews:
DragonWarrior74: I'm glad you liked it, especially the ending, and keep your eyes open for more if you understand what I mean...hee hee...
The MZ-FIT G-MR'S Productions: Thank you, I had to think about what I should write their and it came to me like that XD!
Yorkmanic88: All I can say is...get in line. You'll understand what I mean at the end of this chapter, I promise you that!
Guest: Dude, YAS! I admit that the Team Battle are pretty neat and well made, but a story mode sort of like what they did for Injustice: Gods Among Us when they made small story missions for each character that contributed to a major plot while giving more information on each character's origin. Hopefully Blizzard will make this add-on, but we can only dream my friend!
Guest: I'm not sure, if you're planning on make a story yourself, I'd look at two lists of Overwatch heroes and Marvel/DC heroes to find the latter's heroes that don't match with the Overwatch list and go from their. But from what I know, IRON MAN ALL THE WAY! WOOO!
CPG117:...I'm confused. I didn't actually try and make a reference to CoD: BO, so you might need to explain it to me...XD, I'm an idiot.
K-Dogg: Most likely, I've gotten great suggestions from people to connect missions from action games like Mass Effect into my story, and so far it's working out well so expect more I guess. Also, concerning Bastion, you'll have your answer by the end of the chapter as well. Thanks for the kind words and I hope you enjoy!
TMDFiction: First, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to write these long reviews. I understand that you're a beta reader and I appreciate that you shared this...lengthy review on Revival. You've made some great points on my writing and as I continue to write in general, I'll be sure to think back on what you've told me, especially with Tracer's speaking since that's been a pain for me to write on and now I'm more confident to just write her in my old American style. Now, I won't make a full Q&A on what you've written, but if you want to I'll be happy to PM with you and we can talk about it. Also, I'm going to take your suggestion on a beta reader, so thank you again for your great review/reviews, and...
If ANYONE is interested in becoming a beta reader for Revival, please PM me and we can talk to decide if a partnership can be made, if that's what you call it. Please note for other readers that if I do get a beta reader, chapters may come out slower than usual, but they'll have better writing quality and I hope you'll like that.
That's about it for me, so sit back, relax, and please enjoy the finale of the Project OCE investigation!
May 20, 2038
Nevada Desert, USA
3rd POV:
After patrolling the research station for a few hours, Rick found himself underneath the Overwatch hoverjet and fixing one of the engines with Tracer. According to her, the explosion some time ago caused part of the wiring to fry and lose basic connections with the cockpit, which seemed to be a bad thing if Rick wasn't so tired from the mission. Rick asked with a yawn,
"Remind me again why we're doing this now of all times? Can't we wait till we get to base?"
"A broken engine is an unreliable engine, love. If we left it like this, we might find ourselves falling into the ocean, or falling towards a mountain, or..."
"Alright alright!" Rick interrupted, "I get the idea. But I thought you couldn't do stuff like this to begin with..."
Tracer slid up to Rick underneath the ship, causing him to blush slightly, and whispered,
"I can't, but I needed a distraction to talk to you in private."
"What for?", Rick asked.
"Don't you think Bruce is acting rather...strangely? He keeps watching us up their in his office like we're going to shoot him where he stands or something."
"Yeah, he is. Listen to what he asked him earlier..."
Flashback:
After checking out the other possible entrances for the Bastion units to emerge from, Rick walked into Bruce's office to find the scientist in question looking over a security of Zenyatta meditating in the center of the lobby. Rick asked,
"Whatcha doin', Doc?"
The older man jumped a bit and turned around fearfully and said,
"I think Patrick's gotten into your friend here!"
The agent looked behind Bruce at the footage and replied nonchalantly,
"Nah, that's what he does. 'Told me a while back that it connects him to Iris or something, not sure..."
"He's just a machine."
Rick looked back to the scientist to find his head looking at his hands, which were in his lap and were clenched tightly. He continued,
"They do as we tell them to, nothing more and nothing less."
Getting a bit nervous, Rick started to back away and said,
"Okay, I'm going to get back out there, you just stay here and...yeah."
Rick turned back around and walked through the hallway like before, but now thinking to himself,
Why, for a moment their, did he sound like...
Flashback End
"...your father?", Tracer asked.
"Yeah." Rick replied with a sigh, "When I was younger, my dad always tried to drill that crap into my head since day 1. 'They're just machines, son, and we are their masters!", that's what he told me."
"But how would Bruce know what your father thought of Omnics? I thought he was dead."
"That's what was released to the public. Truthfully, he was never found and hasn't been found for years. Of course, rumors always fly about his whereabouts. A glimpse here, a photo there, but it wasn't enough to pinpoint his location, so the U.S. government forgot about him."
"But," Tracer asked, "how would your father know about this place to begin with?"
Before Rick could answer, the PA system inside of the hanger crackled to life and Bruce's voice said,
"Mr. McCoy, you're going to want to hear this!"
Rick tensed up at that and Tracer asked what the matter was. Rick replied darkly,
"I never told him my last name..."
Rick and Tracer walked into the Bruce's office as he looked over two live security videos with Chris and Sasha inputting their USBs into two separate supercomputers. Bruce said,
"It seems like your team's been able to secure the other lock-downs."
"I'm not surprised. The Last Watch always gets the job done."
Suddenly, the entire computer went dark and a 3-dimensional face made from green pixels appeared a deafening sound of video-interference sounded throughout the office. Then, as soon as it appeared, the screen turned back to normal and Bruce exclaimed,
"That was Patrick, he's infecting more of the system! We have to stop him now or he'll escape!"
"Then let's go!", Rick said and started to walk out of the office until Tracer grabbed onto his arm and asked,
"But what about the others, we can't just leave them!"
"There's no time!", Bruce insisted, "We need to get to Patrick now before he recloses the lower levels."
"I'm sorry Tracer, but he's right." Rick said solemnly, "The other's should be alright, and we need to take this opportunity. Now are you coming or not?"
She hesitated for a moment, weighing her options in her mind, until she briefly nodded and led Rick and Bruce to the hanger to finish what was started.
After a few minutes of flying, Bruce led Rick and Tracer to a square-opening in a flat part of the Nevada Desert. Inside was a dark, metallic passage that led deeper into the surface then could be seen. Bruce said,
"That's the entrance into the lower levels. Through their is a landing platform and Patrick's personal quarters, where all of this started."
Tracer flew the hover jet into the opening and slowly descended into the bowels of the faculty while she asked curiously,
"He's your son, right? Wouldn't you want to have his room closer to your's?"
When he didn't answer, Rick and Tracer turned to him from their seats in the cockpit to find that the scientist had disappeared from behind them. Rick asked,
"Where the hell did he go?"
"Too late to look for him now, there's the landing platform he talked about.", and Tracer grabbed Rick's shoulder and turned him around to show a large metallic platform rising from an even deeper part of the faculty. Tracer landed the hover jet and activated the ship's drop-doors(Wasn't sure what to call them, so...yeah.) for Rick and her to walk off the ship. They walked cautiously across a wide catwalk the extended from the landing platform to an automated doorway that was closed. They approached the door and it opened to reveal two sets of doors, one directly in front of the two a few yards away and another to their left at an equal distance. They walked forward towards the first door as the doorway they walked from closed behind them.
When they approached the door, it didn't open automatically and a strange series of green lines and floating pixels extended from the door and seemed to flow on top of the wall towards the second doorway to their left. As they touched the doorway, they opened wide to reveal a small server farm with a console occupied by the remains of what looked like a scientist. Tracer asked,
"What's going on?"
"It's Patrick." Rick replied, "He seems to be...guiding us for some reason." He walked into the server room and approached the console, which when he approached caused a small green button in the center of the console to light up, while the rest of the electronics remained inactive. He looked back at Tracer, who had slowly followed Rick into the room with her pistols drawn, and said,
"Don't be surprised if this button kills me, ok?"
Before Tracer could protest, Rick had pushed the green button and the lights in the room went dark. Rick said sadly,
"Well, that was anticlimactic..."
Then, the green 3D face appeared again with the same electric cackle like in Bruce's office and green electricity quickly flowed into Rick's suit and around his body, causing him to scream in pain and surprise. He turned around and Tracer gasped as orange pixels surrounded her friend's body and his eyes had turned bright green.
Rick's POV(I know I said I would do 3rd POV for this part, but this is kinda necessary if you've played Mass Effect.):
I looked around and saw the walls had turned to orange and showed several points of where electricity flowed and two white silhouettes of Bastion units appeared and seemed to guard the room from the doorway. I tried to walk towards the door, but I collapsed and I thought I heard someone call out for me, but I couldn't tell for sure. I began to pick myself up until I saw a flash of white light and looked to find 3 more white silhouettes walk towards the door that Tracer and I tried to walk through earlier. One I could tell was Dr. Jefferson, the second seemed to be a lab technician, and the third looked to be a teenager with a short buzz cut and wore a black spandex suit. I got up from the floor and heard the door close behind me and the familiar voice calling out my name as I heard a metallic pounding. For a moment, I couldn't tell who it was until I remembered Tracer and called out,
"It's all right Tracer! Just stay calm and everything will be ok!"
This seemed to help, since the pounding stopped and I couldn't hear her call out for me, so I continued down the hall to where I saw the white silhouettes and the door opened up for me to reveal a sort of workshop with large, flat tables and hanging arms above them that held various tools. I walked further into the room and 3 more silhouettes appeared, one looked like Dr. Jefferson again, the other was a Bastion unit, and the third looked to be the young man before and was sitting cross-legged on the floor. The teen started to recite mathematical equations for square roots as Bruce took a recorder from his pocket, turned it on, and said with a heavy sigh,
"Time on this project is running out, our options have become too limited to yield any beneficial results. I fear our time on this project is running out, and the question still remains. How to get the Omnics attention?"
The Omnic in question started to blurt out nonsense in an electrical-type form of morse code for a minute and stopped. I watched as the teen got up from the fllor and seemed to copy the same pattern of speaking as the Omnic. When he finished, the Omnic replied to him like before and the boy said,
"Father, the robot says hello."
Bruce dropped his recording device and said in amazement,
"Eureka, Patrick! You're a miracle worker!"
The white images began to disappear and I thought to myself, So this is Bruce's son...But how did he know what the Omnic said in the first place?
Then as if to answer my question, a new set of white silhouettes appeared in an adjacent corner of the room and I walked over to find Bruce, Patrick, a lab technician, and older men dressed in a military uniform with countless medals on his chest, and the Omnic from before which was now hanging from the roof. Bruce put his hand on Patrick's shoulder and asked,
"Now I want you to tell Bastion to step forward, alright?"
His son nodded and talked in the same electronic pattern from before and the Omnic moved his legs in a walking motion for a few seconds and stopped. The general exclaimed,
"My god, how does he do it?"
Patrick slowly sat back down onto the floor and Bruce answered his question,
"My son here is a mathematical genius. His autistic mind can interpret the Omnic language in its more basic form and repeat their patterns back to them. With his photographic memory discovering the meaning of each fanatic noise the Omnic's create, he's literally a human computer!"
"...And you think he can be connected to the Omnic's cybernetic network?" The general asked in a skeptical manner. Bruce replied confidently,
"I do."
The lab techie spoke up at that and asked, "Is that even safe doctor? From the standpoint of the other test subjects..."
Bruce interrupted with a shrug and replied,
"I see no harm in finding out. He'll be just fine..."
Except he wasn't, I thought as the white images disappeared, something happened to Patrick and made this whole place go to hell, but what?
As I contemplated the meaning of these memories, another door opened up across from the original door I came from and I walked through it to reveal a large, standing structure in the middle of an equally large room with a metallic ball in it's center and floating green panels orbiting around it. Off to the side were Bruce and the general as the scientist typed on a console connected to the standing structure while I heard Patrick's voice throughout the room calling out Square Roots for several numbers with decimals. Bruce said,
"We're ready, I'm opening a channel to the Omnic network in 3...2...1...opening channel!"
As he finished, the computer blew out and sparks flew out from the console, causing Bruce and the general to shield their faces with their hands and back away. As they did this, the same Bastion Unit from the first two memories marched up and leveled his submachine gun at the two as Bruce yelled angrily,
"Patrick, stop this nonsense at once and connect to the Omnics!"
Patrick's voice called out in fear but almost robotically,
"Quiet please make it stop!"
The Omnic fired at the general and killed him as Bruce ran out of the room in fear. I yelled,
"Patrick! I understand now! Please, show me where you are so I can help you!"
The 3D face appeared again over the structure and called out in brief moments,
"Why...should...I trust...you?"
"You can't!" I replied honestly, "But I can help you! What your father's done to you is unforgivable, and I want to help you get better, but you need to trust me. Show me where you are!"
The face seemed to glitch for a few seconds and then turn into a medium-sized green ball of light that swirled around and merged with the metallic ball inside the structure. With a ring like a bell, the metal ball disappeared and I looked up with wide eyes and said,
"Oh my god..."
The lower half of his body was covered in a metallic cocoon while each of his arms had up to five wires running from his wrist to his elbow. His neck was draped in a metal brace which held wires that kept his eyes and his mouth wide open while two tubes were fitted deeply into his mouth and throat. He looked at me and whispered loud enough for me to hear,
"Quiet...please, make it stop!"
I began to approach him, but as I took my first step, a gunshot rang out and I felt my left leg fill with pain, causing me to collapse onto the ground. I looked behind me to reveal Bruce carrying a 9mm pistol in his hands with a sick smile on his face as he walked slowly towards Patrick and I. He laughed and said,
"Good work, Mr. McCoy, thanks for finishing the hard work for me! I couldn't have done it without you and that British bitch!"
I growled and tried to get up while saying in a pained voice,
"You bastard, how could you do this to your own son!"
"Simple." he replied as he pulled a radio with a shield and dagger design on the back, "I got an offer that I could never refuse. Talon offered to fund my future projects if I gave them the Patrick's code that was connected to the Omnic cybernet. Unfortunately, this little brat here locked it away here and seemed almost impossible to retrieve. Then you and your team came along, and now look at me!"
A clanking noise came from behind Patrick's prison and a familiar Bastion unit appeared with his submachine drawn. Bruce forced me up on my feet and pulled his gun onto my temple while his other arm was wrapped around my neck.
"Nice try, Patty," he said, "But you can't stop me without killing your friend here! So, you're going to give me your code or you can say bye-bye to Ricky here!"
I chuckled softly and Bruce yelled darkly at me,
"What the hell's so funny?!"
"You." I replied as I grabbed the arm around my neck, "You've given me the perfect time to do THIS!"
I ejected the ends of my whips and activated them to electrocute Bruce where he stood, causing him to loosen his grip on me and squirm around on the floor. I looked up to the Omnic and asked,
"Are you on my side?"
It briefly nodded at me and I continued,
"Then get Patrick and go to the hanger, we've got a ship there that can take him away from this hellhole."
As the Bastion Unit, which I'm tempted to just call Bastion now, moved over to Patrick and started to detach him from where he hung as I heard a pained whisper below me say,
"Where will you take him?"
I looked down to find Bruce had crawled over to me and looked up with eyes full of fear. He continued,
"He's been in this faculty all of his life. Only I can accept him, others will treat him as a freak!"
"Overwatch can take care of him," I replied, "We can get him all of the help me needs, minus the torture."
Bruce weakly rolled onto his back and said solemnly,
"It'll be too late. When we arrived here I alerted Talon to our presence. They'll be here in a matter of minutes to take me and Patrick away, and there's nothing you can do about it!"
"Maybe not, but you can at least give your son the chance of freedom. Stop this. Stop Talon while you have the chance!", I begged. Bruce seemed to contemplate my words and slowly got up from the ground. He said to me,
"If what you say is true, and if my son has the chance to live a better life than what I've given him, then I know what I need to do..."
Bruce slowly limped away back to the doorway of the work station, only pausing once to look back at his son as Patrick murmured,
"The square root of 912.4 is 30.2. It all seemed harmless, so harmless...
After Bastion got Patrick out of his restraints, I led the both of them out to the landing platform, where I found Tracer, Chris, Sasha, and Zenyatta waiting aboard the hoverjet. Bastion dropped Patrick onto one of the seats in the passenger area and watched over his vitals as Tracer flew the jet out while I asked Chris and Sasha what happened with them. Apparently, they did some digging at their computers and discovered the security footage off Bruce's tests on his son and had tried to warn Tracer and I, but we had already left before they arrived. As we talked, Chris asked,
"Hang on, where's Bruce?"
I walked slowly over to a round window on the side of the jet and looked over the desert landscape. Suddenly, 4 distinct plumes of fire emerged from 4 different locations across the land and I answered,
"I gave him a choice. At least now he seemed to make a right decision."
I walked away as the siblings rushed over to the window to see what I meant. I sat down beside Tracer as she flew continued to pilot the ship and she asked,
"What exactly happened down there?"
I looked back to Patrick and Bastion to find the man in question had fallen asleep and still seemed to murmur math roots in his sleep. After a moment I answered,
"I'll tell you over dinner sometime, eh?"
She punched me lightly in the shoulder with a wink and I just chuckled. I continued,
"Honestly, I just want to get home and think. After today, I feel like Bruce was only the beginning to what Talon is really planning. We need to be ready..."
Sorta cliche and maybe not the best chapter I've written, but I hope that you still like it. Just a reminder, I'm looking out for a beta reader if anyone's interested and the next chapter might take some time before it comes out. Until then, please share your apperciation with Favorites, Follows, Reviews, etc., and I'll see you next chapter!
But wait! I'm not done yet:
May 22, 2038
Unknown Location
Unknown POV:
"Report, Reaper."
"Yes sir. Bruce Jefferson is dead and his son's location is undetermined."
"And his research?"
"Destroyed. He blew up his faculties using the generator each building was connected to."
*Sigh* "No matter, he was just a means to reach an end. His son is the real prize. But enough of that, how goes our plan?"
"Operation W.A.S.P. is ahead of schedule, and is believed to be ready for operation on target, codenamed: Beginning and End."
"Very well then. Leave me Reaper, I'm sure there's still work for you to be done."
"Yes sir, right away sir."
"Well boy, it seems like you've become more formidable than before. But no matter, I won't make the same mistakes my father made, nor the ones that I've made again. Soon, our final meeting will take place. Very soon...Richard..."
Dun Dun Dun!
NEXT: Rick teams up with Patrick to confront part of the genius's old life before O.C.E. Sparks will fly, and friends will be re-joined...or driven even farther apart.