Lagos, Nigeria.
The facility sprawled out across part of the former industrial quarter of the city. This was going to be a mich harder task than Tangier. It seemed these monkeys were more alert as well: apparently, word gets around quickly when two men who are meant to be worst enemies, as well as being the single greatest threat to your plans, kick in your front door together.
"Told you we shouldn't have let him live," growled Gabriel, "This is gonna be some firestorm."
"Yeah, yeah... at least this place has hard intel."
"So?"
"Weapons free. That make you happier?"
Gabriel gave a hoarse chuckle, as he usually did before playing at being a ballerina with shotguns.
"Considerably. Let's kick some ass."
The pair had opted for a far less covert strategy than Tangier. Rather than waiting until dark and vaulting the wall, they were going for a more direct approach: cleanly through the front gate.
They'd hijacked a mobile AA gun platform from a group of insurgents- none of whom had lived to speak of it- and were now driving flat out at the gate. Gabriel was manning the gun system- a ZZP-23-2, formerly belonging to the Russian Federation- whilst Jack drove.
They were a hundred yards from the gate. Time to go loud.
"Gabe, time to say hello."
Gabriel acknowledged, lacing high-explosive rounds into every part of the defensive line at the front of the base. Advocates scattered left and right. Jack grimaced as he heard the maniacal laughter from the gunner's seat. He's still one sadistic S.O.B. I guess that's why he's useful though...
Quickly enough, the courtyard that had been packed with Advocates armed to the teeth and steeled for battle was reduced to a mass of spent casings, blood and corpses.
The truck careened to a halt amidst the mess, its two occupants vaulting from their positions. They drew their personal weapons and moved toward the main building to their front. Gabriel picked the lock in his usual style, by blasting the hinges and lock with a 12-gauge slug round. The door fell inward with a clatter. Darkness greeted them. Jack cursed as he realised his Tac-Visor was still in cooldown mode.
The pair swept inside, keeping their backs to the wall. No sense in walking blindly into a perfect killbox. A pair of spotlights blinked on, blinding them. As their vision cleared, the extent of the problem became clear: the gantries running along the upstairs section were lined with more Advocates, who in turn were packing the kinds of weapons that Overwatch would have only deployed to take on Titans with.
"Shit. Now what?" Gabriel growled under his breath.
A voice boomed over a megaphone.
"Alright assholes, drop your pieces before we drop you. You got three seconds."
The pair glanced at each other, deciding that this would be the most sensible choice. They'd be no use to Tracer or Widowmaker if they were vulture-food. They tossed their weapons forward.
As they hit the ground, all hell broke loose. A spray of lead tore through the sheet metal behind the gantry ahead of them. The spotlights shattered as confusion gripped the surviving Advocates, who looked onward at the places their comrades had been standing a fraction of a second earlier. Gabriel and Jack weren't about to let the opportunity slip. As they dived forward and reclaimed their weapons, a frame charge detonated on the roof, bringing down a slab of metal and support girder.
A figure swung down through the opening, unleashing a merciless barrage of fire upon the hapless foe. Tracer fire, missiles, particle beams, all kinds of ordnance zipped from one side of the warehouse to the other. Another explosion brought down a gantry, taking a dozen or so more hostiles with it.
Within a matter of seconds, the figure had quelled all resistance. The dust settled, and the firing ceased. One lone survivor attempted to crawl toward the door, a bullet through his leg. The figure approached him, before Gabriel and Jack, his weapon held barrel-up, in a somewhat calm stride. He stopped in front of the stricken Advocate, who froze, petrified, and glanced up.
"Now, where do you think you're going?" came the voice. A British tone. Slight cockney accent. He wasn't from London, but it was obvious that he'd lived there for a long time.
"N-n-n-nowhere! P-please don't k-kill me!"
"Kill you? No, death is far too painless for a bastard like you, Jameston."
"H-how..."
"I'm your new worst nightmare: You can call me the Poltergeist. I believe you have something- someone- belonging to us."
The Poltergeist. The name rung familiar to the pair. A vigilante, like Jack. The name 'Poltergeist' had been coined by one of the various media outlets, mainly because of his tendency to do two things in particular: one, he tended only to operate at night or in darkness; two, he had a habit of rearranging things. More aptly described as reducing buildings, camps, narco-states, whatever, to smoking ruins in a single night. No trace, no casings, very few witnesses. No known motive, until now. But how did he know about Tracer and Widowmaker?
He tied the Advocate to a metal chair that sat in a corner of a side room, as Gabriel and Jack followed him.
They got a clearer view of him now. Black fatigues, classic special operations clothing. Equipment in line with a Counter-Terror operative. And a patch on his right arm. The same kind of patch that... no, impossible. The man had died almost a decade ago.
He turned to face them, removing the tactical mask that had covered his face.
Even through their masks, both Gabriel and Jack stood stunned.
Gabriel started. "You're supposed to be-"
"Dead?" The figure scoffed, before chuckling. "Speak for yourselves, you bastards. I'd still have been napping nice and peaceful, if you two hadn't had that lover's spat back in Switzerland." Gabriel growled. "Ooh, feisty fucker. Still, we all know who wears the trousers between you two."
"Fuck you, Lamont."
He cackled, in his well-known maniacal style. The Advocate on the chair paled as he realised how utterly dead he was: Lamont, his former mentor; Reyes; and Morrison. All in one room. And all, presumably, after the same thing. The prisoners.
Another figure stumbled through the door.
"Dios mio, that's some mess out there boys!"
A familiar, purple-clad woman took up the left side of the doorway. She looked worse-for-wear than the last time either of them had seen her. A number of obvious bruises. A slight hint of a black eye. Cuts and grazes. Tears in her clothing. And was that soot from an explosion of some kind?
Gabriel almost choked on his words.
"Sombra? What the hell happened to you being on holiday, huh?"
She smiled, as much as possible. "I was, until these cabrónes kicked in the door. Thank him, by the way," nodding toward Lamont, "for keeping me out of their hands. And for saving your asses. Burros."
Gabriel turned back to Lamont. "Are you gonna get the info, or do you want me to?"
"I got it."
"Hey, hey, I'm protected. You can't touch me!" Their prisoner was about to get a short lesson in how he was wrong.
"Sure we can." Lamont sat on the man's lap, before backhanding him across the face.
"Now, are you going to play nice, or am I going to have to start removing fingers? Or bollocks?"
Thirty minutes, several gallons of water and various other torture implements later.
The corpse lay on the ground, motionless.
"Gabe, did you really need to slot the poor fucker?"
Gabriel holstered his Hellfire. "The last one we left alive blabbed. That's why this place went to shit."
"Very well." He tossed the holocard that the subject had on him to Sombra.
"Reckon you can get the info up?"
Sombra laughed at Lamont. "Does Gabe enjoy killing everything he sees?" Gabriel twitched: Sombra had almost taken Tracer's place at the top of his list of 'most irritating team-mates'. Almost.
"We've got two more facilities located: One in Dallas, the other in the Sierra Leone wilds."
"We'll take Dallas, you two can take Sierra Leone."
As Lamont walked to the door, Jack called after him. "We?"
"Yep. Me and Sombra will handle Dallas. I've already instructed McCree to-"
"No. We don't need anyone else getting..." He stopped as Lamont held up a hand, so as to say shut your mouth, I'm going to make myself clear. Despite having been his commander, Jack always found it interestingthe amount of power that Lamont had over anyone. Including himself.
"I know what you're trying to do, Jack: You want to keep this as tight a ship as possible. Well, it's not going to work with me. Besides, we have ex-operatives in every country. It's much quicker to task them to assist than have you two apes try and get there. Hours count, Minutes count. Lena means as much to me as she does you, mate. And I'm not about to let her down again."
"Fine. Just make sure you keep us up to speed."
Gabriel jumped in. "What about-"
"Romania? Already taken care of. That's how I found this place and you two. Come on, we're wasting time. Best of luck."
With that, Sombra and Lamont left for Dallas.
Gabriel booted up his communicator.
"Who are you calling?"
"The looks of this next place are that it's an actual fortress, with a damn big door. Luckily, I have a key."
The call connected on speaker. "Akande, I have something for you. Meet us at the old Omnium Fort in Sierra Leone. And be quick."
"What kind of something would that be?"
"Destroying fortresses, laying waste to all in your path. Your kind of something."
"I'll be there in half an hour."
The call went dead.
"Well, Gabe, this is turning into one hell of a reunion, huh?"
Gabriel chuckled again. "That it is."
