It felt like hours. The moment the bullets ripped through his armor before her eyes. His smile turned grim with the pain, but his eyes never wavered.
"Winston!" Tracer scrambled to her feet as the hail of bullets continued. Every second stretched, and every sound amplified. Just over the roaring of the metal was the raggedness of her own breathing. Her limbs quaked with exertion. "Winston, stop! Please!" She fell over as her muscles protested.
And all her best friend did was smile, back hunched over her shorter form. "Lena," his voice rang out. Blood seeped through his lips. And it was wrong, so wrong. "Do me a favor."
The rotors of the back up units roared to life beyond the periphery of her vision. Four helicopters converged over the skyscrapers providing a blanket of cover fire. The hail of bullets ripping through her best friend's back started to lessen as the cover fire continued.
But it was far too late. Tracer felt like crying, screaming, murdering every son of a bitch who shot at Winston with bare hands.
"Lead Overwatch. Protect them." Winston's voice was a whisper of what it had been. Quiet, agonizingly so.
"B-but Winston. I can't-" Lena scrambled for the right words to say. "I'm- you're-" She choked as a well of sadness erupted. "No. You're not dying. That's not happening." Finally able to push her screaming muscles to accept the weight of her body, Tracer moved fully towards Winston as his own limbs collapsed.
"This isn't happening. It's a dream." Tracer mumbled as her mind pushed denial into the foreground. "We're a team. The two of us. You can't just go and die on me." Her voice began picking up volume as the desperation mounted.
Pooling blood seeped from beneath Winston's gear. His eyes stared unseeing at the afternoon sun.
"No. No no no no no." Tracer pushed at Winston's body in vain. "Get up big guy. Come on. Get up. Please."
"Lena!" Someone shouted from behind her. Six pairs of footsteps clacked on the pavement to separate rhythms. "Lena! Winston! Are you guys okay?"
Tracer's breath caught. Angela's medical crew was finally on scene. But they were far too late.
"Lena! Is Winston alright?" Angela's rigid form fell to her knees as she went fully into medical mode.
"It's my fault." Tracer mumbled. "It's all my fault." She scrambled away from the body of her best friend. "Oh god. It's all my fault."
Angela barked commands to the medical team that Tracer couldn't hear. Her ears rang with her own admissions.
Tracer's desperation pushed her to move. Her body hated every motion, fire lit itself along her shins, thighs, and abdomen. Blood, Winston's blood, stained her hands and left a trail of footprints as she raced away. She didn't even hear Angela yelling her name over the rushing in her own ears.
"My fault." She whispered as the chronal accelerator on her chest whirred from the pace she set. "My fault. It's my fault." Her speed increased as her feet padded along the carnage of the city streets. Brickwork and gravel lay strewn across in patches. Bullet holes in the cement caught her eye for the brief second she was near them.
"It's my fault!" she finally screamed as the fire in her muscles and the desperation in her mind lit the rage in her soul.
She gripped the chronal accelerator's straps in her hands. The machine tethering her to the time stream wobbled and whirred on her chest. A reminder of her best friend.
In a fit of rage, Tracer tore at the straps. Tore at it as if it burned. The bindings strained under the pressure giving only slightly to the Brit's strength. Until she was fed up.
Tracer pulled the piece over her head, forcing the contraption to cede to her anger. The electric blue pulse from the machine blazed brightly in her hands.
She stopped suddenly. Parts of her form already starting to slip and become opaque without the tether to time on her person. And then Tracer slammed the chronal accelerator onto the pavement in front of her.
The glass panel on the front cracked with the first slam and broke into pieces on the second.
Tracer let go of the equipment, the accelerator landing face up between her legs and stained with the blood from her hands.
The blood. Winston's blood. Because she killed him.
With a final wordless scream Tracer punched the front of the chronal accelerator, her right hand passing through the broken glass and colliding with the electric blue circular lights of the parts inside.
Pain beyond any she had ever experienced raced up her right arm burning lightning streaks from finger tips to shoulder. The burning continued, pushing on towards her chest, abdomen, legs, and left arm, up her neck and into her head.
Tracer screamed as the world around her shattered, dissolving into the darkness she remembered from long ago. When she had foolishly tested out the Slipstream.
But all that mattered was the continuous burning. The lightning infecting her blood. Because it still hadn't stopped. And in the void that was nowhere and everywhere, Tracer screamed.
And eternity passed.
I'm posting this prologue to see if there is interest in the continuation of this story. Thank you for reading.
-Requiem