Winston remembered Watchpoint Gibraltar in its heyday. A thriving facility, dedicated both to peacekeeping and scientific endeavour, the seaside Watchpoint had once been the workplace and home of hundreds. Now, there were only three. Four, if you counted Athena. The two new arrivals were seated on the opposite side of the gigantic meeting table in the underground levels beneath Watchpoint Gibraltar. Winston normally never ventured far from the labs and his private quarters, cut into the cliffs at the other end of the base, but it seemed fitting that the biggest meeting hall be used for this particular crisis. After all, it wasn't every day that the former commander-in-chief of Overwatch and his right-hand woman came to visit.

It had only been three days since Athena detected two intruders on the boundaries of the empty base, and Winston had gone to investigate. The two old soldiers recognised Winston immediately, but it took the scientist a little while longer to come to terms with the knowledge that Ana and Jack were still alive after so many years of hearing nothing. Dirty, dusty and carrying nothing other than their weapons and the clothes on their backs, the two founding members of Overwatch had established a makeshift campsite in the basement of their abandoned facility.

That had been yesterday. During that night, Athena had warned Winston of unusual activity in Britain, and within hours police bands throughout London were repeating the same news – Lena Oxton, former Overwatch agent, had seemingly been kidnapped from her home. Fuelled by several dozen jars of his favourite sandwich spread, Winston had stayed up through the night as he tracked Lena and her chronal accelerator as they headed West towards America.

Ana Amari was seated to his right, sipping tea from a cup and saucer she had salvaged from the old cafeteria. The hood on her armoured coat was pulled back, revealing her silver hair and the blue eyepatch that covered the scars she had sustained during events that had supposedly claimed her life all those years ago. Jack Morrison had his feet propped up on the meeting table to his left, with a large assortment of weapons spread out in a loose semicircle around him. As if he had some sort of nervous tic, Jack was constantly disassembling and reassembling his equipment, so much so that the area underneath his chair gave off a faint blue glow from the pulse rifle batteries that were stacked up there. The former commander seemed in perfect physical health, thanks to the powerful genetic modification he had undergone decades ago, but his hair had turned grey and the once handsome face had become crisscrossed with scars and wrinkles.

"Fortunately, both Lena and her chronal accelerator have tracking devices implanted in them. If she were to suffer a relapse of her syndrome, the two would appear separately…but this is different."

Ana set her teacup down. "Tracking devices? Did anyone else…receive these?"

"Well…it wasn't my idea, you understand. Ziegler thought it might simplify some missions."

Jack managed a rare smile. "I don't recall filling out one of her consent forms. Would that have complicated things further?"

Their laughter created an eerie echo in the cavernous meeting hall.

Winston called up a three-dimensional projection of Lena's apartment. Details of interest were highlighted in red, and potential entrances and exits glowed white. The standard layout of the apartment was overlaid with pieces of evidence that had been discovered by police.

Jack leaned in. "Tell me what I'm looking at."

"Not a lot, I'm afraid. Whoever hit the apartment did it professionally. It took a few hours before forensics bots were able to find anything, and even then, it was only a few out of place strands of hair and pieces of skin."

Ana raised her eyebrow. "How do you know?"

"Aha, it seems as though the City of London has not upgraded their hardware much since the Overwatch days. I had the remote access codes for those bots here at the facility." Winston pulled out to display an image of the interior of the apartment. "Anyway, the most important piece of evidence is right here. This broken wiring here…and this metal piece here…they were parts I helped to install. Both interface directly with her chronal accelerator. Whoever broke in must have known about the device, and maybe…maybe that was what they were after in the first place."

Jack stroked his chin. "What use would the chronal accelerator be on its own? Even if you had it, I thought only Lena knew how to use it."

"Think like he does, Jack." Ana gave Jack a cryptic look. "Why else would you kidnap the girlfriend?"

Jack paused. "Girlfriend. Right. She could be used as leverage."

Winston stayed quiet. From spending time with the pair of the last few days, he had come to learn that references to "him" or "he" most likely meant the mysterious Reaper, the same Talon agent who had attacked the Watchpoint several months ago.

"Winston. You said something about Talon…about what he was trying to steal."

"Yes. The agent database is still stored here at Gibraltar. It does include location information, and if Talon got their hands on it, then they would be able to track Lena down. Athena, can you confirm that the hacking device Talon brought with them did not succeed in extracting the agent database?"

A female voice echoed out from a speaker mounted on the ceiling of the meeting room. "Indeed, it did not. However, I suspect that the attack made it possible for other parties to breach the security protocols around the database."

"W-what? Athena, why didn't you tell me?"

"I apologise, Winston. At the time, I did not consider such information to be relevant. However, despite my best efforts to rebuild the security system, there was a period of heightened vulnerability to hacking attempts in the hours following the security breach. In light of this current discussion, I have blocked all database access for the foreseeable future."

Jack nodded. "It makes sense. He must have put a virus into the system so that if he didn't manage to get out with the files, then whatever cyber-criminals Talon has on its payroll could come back and get them later."

"Then why didn't they act sooner? Talon could have attacked Lena at any time, but instead they've waited months before making their move."

There was a long pause, broken only by the rattle of Ana's teacup, and the metallic clatter of parts as Jack reassembled his pulse rifle.

"We won't know until we get there. Athena has a ship on standby to take us to New Mexico."

Jack frowned. "We won't get there fast enough. You saw on the map how quickly they moved her from London. If they detect us, they'll take her somewhere we can't follow."

"Why not land nearby, then trek in on foot?" Ana ventured. "Travelling light, we could manage a fair pace."

"Hmm. Our maps of the area are a decade out of date. Without any contacts on the ground, we won't know the fastest way through, or what we might be up against."

Ana looked from Winston to Jack, and then down at her cup and saucer, a questioning expression on her face. "That's…not entirely true, is it, Jack? There is someone quite close by."

The former Commander swiftly cut her off. "No. Not him. We can't rely on some vigilante to help us."

"I'd hardly describe him as just a vigilante. His experience fighting Talon suggests otherwise."

Ana looked over at Winston, and the scientist nodded. "We all have something in common. All of us trusted Lena, and she felt…no, feels the same way about us." A pulsing blue dot had appeared near to Lena's location on the map of New Mexico, and as Winston spoke an Overwatch identification code flashed above it. "Even he would feel the same way."

"Attention, agents. Telemetry indicates that Lena Oxton is now interfacing with the chronal accelerator. Standby for further intelligence."