It felt...empty.

Her eye lids opened slowly, like rusty silo doors. For a moment, everything was blurry, until Fareeha sat up and rubbed her eyes. She reached for her rocket launcher, only to grasp thin air. Her eyes went wide as she quickly snapped around to find that not only her weapon, but her armor was gone as well.

Armed with nothing but her fists and clothed in nothing but her cadet uniform, Pharah let her combat training take over as she assessed her new surroundings.

Wait...cadet uniform?

What was she doing in her cadet uniform?

Didn't matter. She could figure that out later, right now she needed to get her hands on a half-decent weapon and then link up with any friendly forces in the area.

As the Egyptian Skyknight traversed through the clabbered fog that surrounded her, she spotted the faintest hint of an outline of a person. Falling back on her training, she stuck to the shadows and came up on the person from behind.

But just as she was about to interrogate them, they disappeared into thin air. Stunned, she looked around, expecting this to be some sort of ambush. But nothing happened.

"Well well well... you were certainly much shorter the last time I saw you."

Pharah spun around, her fists raised, ready to fight her way through whatever may come her way.

"Who's there!?" She barked into the mist.

"Tch. Now now. Is that any way to greet your former squadron commander?"

As the figure stepped out of the shadows and into the light, the shroud of mystery fell away. Pharah was beyond confused. She had too many questions.

"Or should I say ex-squadron commander?"

It was her old commander. The same commander that had been her sergeant in charge from the day she had graduated from the Military Academy.

"Colonel Abasi?! But...I was there during the omnic crisis. I was right beside you. How did you-"

"Survive? I didn't. That eradicator unit in Giza tore me to ribbons, you saw that as well as I." Abasi commented non-chalantly.

"Then does that mean that I'm...

Fareeha's eyes went as wide as dinner plates as realization hit her like a sledgehammer. Her fists turned back to hands as they dropped to her sides. Her mouth hung open as her mind raced at a thousand miles a minute.

"But if you didn't survive, and I'm here...does that mean that I'm?" Fareeha asked with paralytic confusion lining her words.

"Well...yes and no. You see, like me, you got your ass handed to you." Abasi laughed.

Fareeha scowled in response, obviously unamused.

"However, unlike me, you still have the talent of one very intelligent medical officer to bring you back. You've only just went down and your 'soul' hasn't faded away quite yet. You still have time."

Abasi opened some sort of vision to where Angela was at that very moment, blissfully unaware that her loved one was mere minutes from death.

"Now, come. We have quite a few things to discuss." The dead colonel beckoned.

Pharah could only look on longingly at the vsion into the living world.

At the same time, Candian Military Perimeter

Angela was hoping more than ever that her girlfriend was in good health. Just minutes earlier she had heard the roar of a vicious firefight from the heart of the occupied city before it had all suddenly stopped.

She was no expert in combat, but to her, that sounded like a bad sign.

Ziegler decided it was time to go back to work. A few of the citizens of New Ontario had been injured during the evacuation. On the bright side, there were no fatalities, and most of the wounds were nothing more than cuts, scrapes, and grazes.

She deftly strolled over to the makeshift hospital field tent that had been set up mere hours prior. Pulling back the thick canvas tent flap, she witnessed a large group of people cluttered around it with varying levels of injury.

"Alright everyone. Let's form a calm and orderly line so that-"

"Ms. Ziegler! I need you out here ASAP!"

As Ziegler was interrupted mid-sentence, she formed a face to her patients that basically said "Well, sorry."

"One moment, please" She said to her patients.

Exiting the field hospital as soon as she arrived, she spotted two soldiers waiting for her outside, weapons in hand as they stood at attention.

Soldiers...in Pharah's squad. She recognized them.

"What's going on?" She questioned.

"Grab your healing staff and gear up. We took a casualty and we need you in the field."

"Understood!"

Chief Medical Officer Ziegler was used to this kind of treatment. Being told to gear up at the drop of hat, having no idea who had been injured or why. In the field of battle, time was your greatest ally, but working as a medic, time was your greatest enemy.

Within under two minutes she had rushed to her lab, grabbed her Cadeceus staff, self-defense blaster, and Valkyrie suit, and was headed back to the soldiers. It was as if she had just done it through sheer muscle memory and experience.

But something about this little rescue mission felt different. Worryingly different. The omnics were using jammers, so of course two soldiers would have to come back to the perimeter physically to give mission reports, but what was going on exactly?

She would have to find out.

The three of them headed into the combat zone at full sprint, luckily for them this part of the city had been cleared of omnic forces for the most part earlier in the day, so they could run through it without much fear of counterattack.

But an omnic ambush wasn't what Angela had plaguing her mind at the moment.

"Who was it?" Ziegler asked.

That question halted the soldiers in their tracks. They looked at each other slowly.

"I'm so sorry! I-I was talking to her about how nervous I was and then w-we came under attack and I w-wasn't paying attention and I-"

The other soldier put his hand on her shoulder to calm her. The first soldier fell silent shortly afterwards. Now Angela remembered her. This was the new recruit to Pharah's squad if her memory served her well. But what was she going on about? Unless...oh no.

NO.

Her warm caring smile faded in an instant. Her heart sank to the bottom of her stomach. Her worst fears came to fruition.

"Squad leader Pharah was hit pretty bad, but we need to keep moving if we're going to make it in time." The other soldier reported. Not waiting for the other two, he continued on towards the rest of the squad.

The other two quickly followed suit. Soon they could see the rest of the squad forming a tigh-knit circle around a body. Ziegler let go of her sense of caution as she sprinted towards the unmoving person. She ran fast.

Faster than she had ever run before.

Caduceus appeared in her right hand through reflex. She immediately got to work doing what she did best. She unleased billions of nanobots into Pharah's body to accelerate her recovery time by 400,000%

But it wasn't working. The nanobots were performing their function to accelerate recovery but without any life in the body, the nanobots weren't good for anything.

That left Ziegler with only one option.

Without any other options for recovery, Mercy desperately armed the master switch on Caduceus to activate the resurrection function. Angela took another glance at her wounds. Lacerations and holes dotted her chest. A chemical burn had seared away half her face, and her leg was missing.

The last time she had used a Caduceus resurrection on someone with injuries of this scale was back when the Swiss Headquarters fell. Gabriel was lying with half his body missing in a pile of rubble, but when he had awoken he had turned into...What he is now.

Oh god, what if Fareeha...

No. She refused to let that happen again.

"Clear!" She shouted as she charged Caduceus.

She prayed that it was enough.

And activated the resurrection charge.