The underground facility was in a state of panic, soldiers flocking toward the front entrance to help hold against the enemy. Mercy was running against the tide. By the time she reached the dormitories most of her team were already gone. Her team. She realised the slip, and was glad she hadn't said it out loud. They weren't her team. They were all individuals. She had every intention to recruit them to her purpose but until she found the time to explain herself…
Still, they were gone, whether they were her team or not.
'What now?' Cassidy asked. He was standing behind her, his antique six-shooter in hand, waiting for orders. That was the good thing about Cassidy. He might be a lone wolf, and the former leader of a bloodthirsty gang, but he seemed to have no trouble deferring to others when they knew best. Now, for example.
Mercy looked around again, taking inventory. There was almost nothing left in the bare dormitories – steel-framed beds with lumpy old mattresses, puddles of water at the base of the showers, and dirt scuffed floors – but no sign of clothing or supplies. That meant the others had not simply gone to fight, they were intending to leave for good. Perhaps they'd left after the sirens started, perhaps they'd already been planning their secret escapes. Either way, long gone.
She turned, hoping to ask Reaper's opinion. He had already gone his own way, possibly following Soldier 76 and Widowmaker to the fight. Or possibly to complete some other agenda. Who could say?
'Mercy?' Cassidy prompted.
'Sorry.' She looked around, one last time. Road Hog, Junkrat, Tracy, Genji. Where had they gone? They knew how to fight, yes, but she had the feeling they would be fleeing the battle. They were survivors, scavengers. They needed a lot more work if they were ever to become a real team. They owed nothing to this facility, to these clones. She doubted they would be fighting in defence of it.
Funny how just a few days ago entering this facility had seemed like the most difficult task in the world. Now they'd barely been inside an hour or two, and were already desperate to leave.
'Pack your things,' Mercy said, gesturing to Cassidy's meagre belongings, which lay where he had left them on the bed. 'We'll leave in a moment. I'll see if I can find which way the others went.'
Cassidy went to his own room. Mercy turned, and followed the sounds of combat as best she could, heading in the direction of the front entrance. The walls shook with the strain of war, dirt and dust cascaded from the roof in little defiant streams.
When she reached the front doorway, she was shocked.
The wall of the mountain had been raised. It was not solid rock, as she had originally thought, rather heavy concrete blast doors disguised as mountainside. Massive blast doors, clearly designed to let carrier airships or other massive transports in and out.
Rather than fighting their way through a small doorway, the battlefield was broad and open, flashing lasers and old-fashioned rifle bullets zig-zagged through open air, explosions rocking the earth, a sheet of smoke descending on the combatants. Clones in their uniforms fell at an alarming rate, women and children along with the men. Opposite them, through the haze, Mercy could just make out enemy forces with advanced weaponry charging forward.
Mercy and her group had tried this not so long ago. A small team of seven, slipping in amongst the debris in a desperate attempt to reach the door. It was a very different strategy to this full-scale invasion.
Exiting through the opened blast doors was a tank belonging to Soldier 76 and his clones. The long canon-head swivelled left and right, firing at regular intervals, demolishing enemy vehicles or clumps of attackers whenever possible. But there was artillery on the enemy side, too. A huge warship was hovering just outside, lowering tanks and turrets to defensive position. Missiles were firing in at the mountain. One hit the tank and blew it apart.
Mercy stood back. If she had the time, the opportunity, she was sure she could help many of these people. She could see them now, with their missing limbs and burnt skin, their damaged eyes and ears, their bleeding and broken bones. She could help them. Save them from early death. Save them from rising again as the undead.
But there was no chance. No opportunity. The enemy forces were almost through. A few more minutes and the fight would be over. There were hardly any clones left.
She saw Soldier 76 at that point. He leapt over a barricade with surprising grace for an old man, his heavy boots slamming into mud without pause. The missile from his rifle pierced through the air and exploded against a faceless enemy, blasting them into chunks of meat. His rifle pounded, and enemies fell before him. His clones rallied around his impressive display, but they fell as they tried to reach him. The enemy fire was too dense. Soldier 76 retreated almost as soon as he advanced.
The Widowmaker was next. Mercy spotted the French agent as she clambered over the ruins of the tank and, hiding in the smog of its death, she fired shot after shot into the ranks of the enemies. Her long-range attacks never missed their mark. A dozen foes fell before she stopped to reload, and that was when it got interesting. Widowmaker removed the extension from her sniper rifle so that it resembled a more standard rifle, raised her left wrist, and fired a harpoon into the mouth of the cavern. The rope pulled her upwards and she dangled their by her left arm, firing maniacally into the enemy, spraying shots.
It was several moments before the enemy spotted her hanging cocoon-like from the roof, and fired up. Widowmaker released herself, dropping and rolling to the ground without harm, and the clones rushed forward to protect her retreat.
The enemy were almost upon them now. Mercy, who had arrived at the rear of the battle, was now almost on the front line though she hadn't taken a step. Clones surrounded her, pushed past, and then, on 76's orders, they grabbed her arms and pulled her back. The fight had become a retreat. She'd been the last one through, but was now blocking the hasty exit.
Soldier 76 passed by her as they fell back and spoke in his gritty voice. 'If you're not going to fight, stay back.'
Mercy, almost too stunned to even respond, obliged.
She still had not caught a good look at the enemy. They seemed Japanese, as she'd predicted, and were well-funded and well-armed. But she had not been able to make out Genji's brother within the fray. He must be there. Their prisoners in the fight that morning had promised it.
Mercy turned to fall back with 76 and his army, and ran straight into Road Hog's barrel chest. The enormous man looked down at her, gas mask over his face, gun in hand. But the gun was altered somehow. It looked longer, as if he had added an extension. And at its side was a handle.
'Hand held turret,' Road Hog grunted. 'Wind it up and spray.'
Mercy did not understand what he meant. Was he talking about the gun?
The last of the clones retreated past them and the first of the Japanese invaders entered the facility. They rushed down the narrow corridor, all dressed in red and white combat uniforms – patriotic but ineffective for camouflage – and all carrying guns. Most of them wore masks, but all had a mop of black hair above their eyes, a fairly even mixture of men and women.
The only one remaining to face them was Road Hog, the maniac. And Mercy. But that was only because she was too stunned to make her own decisions right now. Everything was chaos. None of it made sense.
'Wind it up…?' she asked.
'Good idea.'
Road Hog began to turn the handle with his right hand, holding the gun as closely as he could with the left and, as promised, an onslaught of bullets and scrap metal spat forward with such force that the first few enemies in front of him were not just killed, but thrown backwards. Somehow that wind-up gun was punching molten scrap into gunpowder and shooting out bullets the size of missiles. Those behind the frontline were more fortunate than their fellows. Instead of being thrown back, shattered against the walls, they were killed instantly, torn to shreds by the barrage of horizontal hail, a storm of bullets that no man could stand against.
'Road Hog, that was…' Mercy fumbled for words.
'I call it the Whole Hog,' he replied, looking remarkably self-satisfied as he lowered the weapon and removed the extension.
Mercy and Road Hog fell back now, following the clones back through the corridors yet again. It seemed that no choke point could be held for long, no matter how narrow it was. The cavern was wide, and there were many entrance points. Even if Road Hog had been able to turn his one-man-turret all afternoon the enemy would have flanked him within minutes.
The tide of retreating clones thinned as the fight wore on. It took Mercy a while to realise that, at every bend in the path, a few would stay behind to slow the enemy.
Soldier 76 looked flustered when they eventually caught up with him. He was in a command centre, Special Agent Lacroix by his side, standing straight and cold with her pale blue skin. 76 did not look out of breath – Mercy wondered if he even could look out of breath – but he did look frustrated.
'They're everywhere.' He gestured to a map on the wall, a spider web like blueprint of the insides of the facility, a labyrinth of tunnels and pathways. 'They've taken half the facility already. After we lost the main entrance…' He trailed off, disgusted at his own failure.
Widowmaker took over, her voice clipped with the accent of the Parisians. 'Your friend le Reaper is defending the Northern wing with our troops, but they will not last much longer. We do not know where the rest of your friends are.'
'Neither do we,' Mercy sighed. She extended her staff and looked around at the wounded and weary sharing seats in the command centre. She began to heal.
'We thank you for your assistance,' Widowmaker continued, now speaking to Road Hog. 'But you should leave. We will not fight much longer. We have begun our evacuation already.'
'If I wanted to leave I'd've done it with the rest,' Road Hog grunted. 'But I didn't.'
Mercy wondered why not. She thought, almost unconsciously, that it was perhaps because of her. He seemed fond of her – like friends, but also as more than friends. A guide. Road Hog did not seem confident or mature enough to stand alone, and he liked the security that being with Reaper and Mercy provided. It was a humorous thought. Mercy was making her plans up as she went along just like everyone else.
'Where to from here?' she asked, repairing a broken arm.
'There are only about two dozen clones left,' Soldier 76 sighed. 'The women and children are evacuating now – those that haven't died defending the facility already. Anyone still alive will be able to hide in the catacombs below the facility. The doors can be sealed, and there's enough food and water to last a long time. But the rest of us…'
'We need to buy them time,' Mercy guessed.
'Oui,' Widowmaker nodded. 'More importantly, we need to reach this point.' She gestured to the map. 'It is the only remaining escape route, unless you plan to spend the next twenty years hiding underground with the frail.'
The gunfire was closer now. Road Hog leaned out the door and fired his chain. From here, standing behind him, Mercy heard the whoosh of air as it was ejected. She did not see the result, but she heard a man's death cry, and guessed that Road Hog's hook had pierced the heart of an oncoming enemy.
When she turned back Soldier 76 and Widowmaker were the only two still in the room. The other soldiers had moved on. 76 reloaded and lowered his tactical visor over his eyes.
'Find your friends,' he said, 'we'll meet you at the escape point.'
Mercy nodded, and dragged Road Hog by the arm away from the room. He followed reluctantly, walking backwards, firing at any enemy that dared to show their face. Soldier 76 and Widowmaker exited the room at the same time, but went a different way.
Mercy led the way.
'Where did you last see the others?' she asked Road Hog.
He never got to answer the question. Two foes rounded the corner, firing with pistols. Road Hog took a shot to the chest, and immediately responded by firing his hook. The attempt was almost too low – it skipped off the floor and caught the man around the leg, dragged him back. Road Hog stepped down, pressing his full weight upon the fallen man, and crushed him. Mercy extended her wings and dashed forward to cut the second man down with her staff. Then she returned, and healed Hog's wound.
'Tracy and Genji left an hour ago, straight after we got here,' Hog said. 'Cassidy was with you, I think, talking to Soldier. And Junkrat…'
'Yes?'
'He stayed behind.' Road Hog's loyalty to the Junker was causing him to fumble his words. Whatever Junkrat had been doing it was not something good. She was thankful to Road Hog for coming to their aid, but she almost wished he had stayed to watch over the eccentric skinny man a little longer. Who knew what he was up to now, with all those explosives?!
'Where is he, Road Hog?' Mercy asked. She layered the mothering tone on thick. It worked.
'He was setting a trap,' Road Hog admitted. 'He's planning to kill Cassidy.'
Mercy paled, and changed direction. She had to get to the dormitories before she lost one of her most valued warriors.
Or, even worse, two of them.