Hanzo couldn’t see anything. Only blackness. Almost all of his senses were devoid of him. He could hear something. A voice. Muffled. He couldn’t tell who they were, or understand what they were saying. It felt like he was laying on pavement. Most likely a street of some kind.
He tried opening his eyes. His vision was blurry. He could make out a dark silhouette in an orange background. He felt heat all around him.
Then he felt himself being nudged. Someone was shaking him. He could barely hear the voice talking to him, and barely made out the words.
“Wake up, Hanzo.”
He moved his hand to his face to rub his eyes. As he did, he became aware of a new feeling: pain. He felt a sharp sting in his abdomen. It felt like he had been shot.
He rubbed his eyes clear, and immediately saw the chaos around him. The orange background was a fire. It was burning all around him. With his hand free, he moved it downwards to the pain.
Suddenly, his hand felt wet. He pulled it away and it was covered in a warm, dense, red liquid. He was bleeding. He looked around for someone. Anyone. Maybe a med-kit. He didn’t care. He just wanted help.
His eyes fell on the silhouette. He could finally see the person in detail. It was Genji, his brother. The bright green visor of his sleek armor’s helmet felt like it was staring into his soul.
“Hang in there, brother.” He said. His voice usually serious Japanese accent now had worry in his tone. “Help is coming.”
Hanzo reached up and clutched his brother’s arm. “Where is she?” He asked, with anger in his voice.
Genji ignored the question. “Help is coming.” He repeated.
He heard footsteps coming from his other side. White metal boots were next to his other arm. The figure knelt down. He knew them. It was Mercy. Her angel-like armor glowed in a seemingly holy aura.
She spoke in a German accent. “Everything will be okay. Your time has not come yet.” In her right hand, she clutched her high-tech healing staff. Angling it down towards Hanzo’s wound, glowing yellow strands of energy flowed from the tip of the staff and into the injury.
The wound began to close. The blood was still there, but no more was flowing. Suddenly, he felt no more pain, at least no physical pain.
His brows furrowed. He could looked around for his weapon, and found it lying next to him. His trusty bow. He grabbed it and quickly stood up, his black beard and long hair shaking with the sudden movements.
He looked at Genji and asked again. “Where is she?”
-“Who?”
-“You know who I’m talking about! Sombra! Where did she go?!”
Mercy chimed in. “She’s probably going to the city’s data center!”
Hanzo’s face filled with horror. “That scum could hack the entire city from there, or worse!”
“After the explosion, she went that way.” Mercy said, gesturing down the city street.
Hanzo had already dashed in that direction before she even lowered her arm. He couldn’t believe how it went so wrong so fast. An anonymous tip told Overwatch that Sombra, the world’s most skilled hacker, and an amazing fighter due to her grafting of technology into herself, was going to Tokyo. Her cybernetic modifications were so advanced, she could hack most things just by touching them.
Suddenly, Overwatch mobilized. A massive force of three separate strike teams were sent to the city to capture Sombra. Things fell apart from the moment they landed. Sombra had already arrived hours before they did. She had hacked the Omnic defense robots guarding the city and corrupted them into her own personal army.
Hanzo’s team, consisting of Genji, Mercy, and himself, were immediately fired upon by a large force within the first minute their transport landed. By then, they had already lost contact with the other teams.
They all knew what would happen if they failed. From the data center, she could hack the entire city remotely, and even potentially other cities. With no digital barrier powerful enough to stop her, she could potentially hack the entire planet from that data center.
Thankfully, they designed a solution. Winston, their leader and top scientist, designed special handcuffs to bind her and disable any way she could escape, such as teleporting, turning invisible, or even just hacking the cuffs themselves.
Unfortunately, they first had to put the cuffs on her, which was much easier said than done. When the corrupted omnics attacked them, they destroyed the transport they arrived in. Sombra herself joined the attack, as if to taunt them, before apparently heading back towards the data center. It had been her who shot him in the first place with her SMG.
Hanzo and Overwatch had to stop Sombra, or the entire world would suffer the consequences. Hanzo turned around, and saw Genji and Mercy in close pursuit, trying to keep up with him. They wanted to stop her just as badly. As Hanzo ran, he wondered what was happening to the other two strike teams…
————————————————-
Reinhardt’s energy shield couldn’t hold up against an attack like this for much longer. He couldn’t either. Even with the upgraded armor, the fundamental idea was the same: a guy in a large battle suit with an energy Shield and a rocket-powered hammer. That idea dated back to before the First Omnic Crisis.
This wasn’t much different, and the situation reminded him of his glory days, fighting hordes of Omnics just like he did with the Crusaders and the old Overwatch. Whether this reminiscence was in a good way or a bad way, he still didn’t know.
That wasn’t important right now. He had to get to cover before his shield gave out. He looked across the street, spotted an alleyway, and moved into it. His shield gave out right before he got to cover, and his armor took a few rounds, but for the most part, he was okay.
He looked around for the rest of his strike team. Bastion was sheltering in an alleyway just across from him. There wasn’t a
Single instance where Reinhardt looked at Bastion and wasn’t instantly reminded of the horrors wrought upon him and his close friends at their hands. He wondered how Bastion felt about him. He never spoke, so there was no real way of knowing.
Bastion was an Omnic who fought in the first crisis as well, except on the opposite side. He was deactivated for decades, before reawakening and rejecting his old programming. His ancient systems had since been updated by some friends, and now he fought with Overwatch, instead of against them. To Reinhardt, the oddest thing about him was the bird that always sat on his shoulder and rarely left his side.
The usual blue light of Bastion’s single rectangular “eye” way now red with alert. Bastion was typically passive, but in combat he fought like how Omnics usually did back in his time. What made Bastion even deadlier was his vast arsenal of weapons, from an arm-mounted grenade launcher and minigun on his back to the ability to enter a tank-like combat mode and mow down enemies.
Unfortunately, neither of them could withstand the onslaught of fire from Sombra’s corrupted Omnics. They were pinned down, waiting for a break in the assault. This was not going well for them.
Suddenly, a barrage of small missiles hit the street where the Omnics were. The firing stopped, and the battlefield went quiet. Still not entirely sure if it was safe, Reinhardt cautiously poked his head out of the alley to see what had happened, nothing but debris, smoke, and craters filled the street now.
A woman with dark skin and a blue, bird-like power armor landed in the middle of the wasteland. She was Pharah, the third member of the strike team. Her armor reminded Reinhardt of some hero of an American comic book that he couldn’t remember the name of.
Reinhardt and Bastion stepped out onto the street and just stared at her.
Reinhardt broke the silence. “Where were you when the firefight started?”
“I was waiting for the right moment to strike.” She replied.
-“And you couldn’t have done that earlier?”
-“Raining justice is more effective when they’re bunched up.”
Bastion beeped in an irritated tone. He was getting impatient.
Reinhardt picked up on it. “Bastion’s right. We should keep moving.
-“What’s the progress on the other teams?”
-“We’ve been unable to contact our friends.”
-“That isn’t good.”
-“Yeah, but they know the objective. We’ll rendezvous at the data center, and so will they. For now, we keep moving.”
Reinhardt’s shield had regenerated by now. He put it up, and it covered a large area in from of them. The others fell it behind him as they charged down the street and closer to the data center. If Sombra got there before them, they stood no chance.
——————————————
This Omnic was much larger than the other ones Winston’s Team had faced. The super intelligent gorilla narrowly dodged out of the way as it grabbed a car and threw it at him. He quickly adjusted his glasses before raising his weapon and firing a spray of electricity at the giant robot.
The Omnic was about two— no, three times his height. It had massive laser cannons built into its arms. It pointed it in his direction and fired a thick red energy beam. It missed, but it carved a charred line into the street and sliced off the front half of an empty car sitting on the roadside. Winston didn’t even want to think of what would happen if that laser hit him.
He looked around for the others in the team. Cassidy, Overwatch’s cowboy fighter, was ducked behind a large truck. He had no idea where Tracer had gone. The energetic young British woman was always darting all over the place.
Cassidy wore a typical cowboy hat and a red poncho. He had a small brown beard and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. His left arm had been replaced by cybernetics after the old one had to be removed. He clutched a revolver in his right hand. The tip of the barrel was smoking.
Winston dodged another beam. This one got much closer. He could feel it’s heat at the beam blazed past him. The Omnic was now towering over him. Winston was use to usually being the tallest one in the room. Now he felt short.
The giant robot looked down at him, but its gaze was quickly distracted by something landing on its chest. It was a small white device, no bigger than a plate. It was blinking blue. At first the blinks were slow, and then they started speeding up. Those were the flashing indications of a pulse bomb.
It suddenly exploded. The Omnic collapsed, the purple glow fading from its eye. Tracer appeared quickly afterwards.
Tracer was a young British woman. She was cheery, often being the one to keep spirits up, but always serious when the situation called for it. Her brown hair was cut in wild shapes. She wore protective goggles with an orange tint. She had a large white device with a bright blue core strapped to her chest: The Chronal Accelerator. This device kept Tracer anchored to reality after the Slipstream accident, but it also gave her the ability to speed up and slow down her own time, but it wasn’t time travel, like some others thought. Aside from that, she wore white forearm armor and bright orange leggings.
The street was quiet now. The tall Omnic was the last one in the area. The only noise was smoke and some heavy breathing. Cassidy came out from his hiding place, spitting out his cigarette. Tracer was the first to break the silence.
“Well, loves, I think we should keep moving!” She said.
Winston continued. “I agree. Let’s recount supplies, reload weapons, and keep moving.”
Cassidy didn’t seem happy. He rarely was… about anything combat-related. “Do we know where the other teams are?” He asked.
“I’m afraid not.” Tracer replied. “We haven’t regained communication since the landing.”
“Let’s hope for the best. They can handle themselves. We have to do our part.” Winston added.
-“Let’s hope we’re not too late.”
-“Agreed. If Sombra beats us to the data center, that doubles our chances of failure.”
“Well then, let’s move already!” Cassidy added in an impatient tone.
The three moved down the street towards the data center.
————————————
Sombra was becoming slightly concerned. Her corrupted army had failed in stopping all of Overwatch’s strike teams, and they were all now converging on her location.
She could still handle this, though. She was just down the hall from the data center, and sprinting towards it. She wondered if she could have ended this earlier by not going out to taunt them. The bearded Japanese man with the bow seemed particularly upset. She wondered if he survived her shooting him.
Not that it mattered. She was within arm’s reach of victory. Once she got into the system, she would win.
She could have hacked any device on the planet, but she couldn’t do it from just anywhere. She needed a place capable of receiving, processing, and distributing massive amounts of data, like Tokyo’s data center. From there, she could remotely hack every system on the planet at the same time.
She would reveal everything to everyone she could, and finally achieve her world vision: no more secrets.
———————————-
The three teams met up outside the data center. Fortunately, all of them had made it through relatively unscathed.
Cassidy shot off the hinges and kicked in the door to the data center. He went pale when he entered and saw Sombra standing there, hand firmly planted on a wall of servers. Every server was glowing purple.
Sombra was a young Latina with brown skin and dyed purple hair cut oddly so it only hung down on one side. She wore sleek, black clothing and smooth, glowing purple gauntlets around her wrists.
“You’re too late, Overwatch! I’ve won!” She mocked as the rest of the team entered the room.
She went on. “You know, I could have hacked this place hours ago. Done this quietly, and nobody would have noticed, but I wanted to see the looks on your faces when you finally lost. You’re welcome for the tip, by the way. Man, was it worth it.”
Reinhardt stepped forward, clearly angry. “You were the anonymous tip?!” He asked, voice booming. Sombra nodded in acknowledgement.
“Adios!” She said.
A flash of purple light filled the room, and was replaced with darkness. The lights flickered for a moment, before settling down back to normal.
Overall, the room had barely changed. Except for one thing: Sombra was gone, escaped to who-knows-where, and the servers pulsed with purple electricity.
The room filled with silence. The confident smile that rarely left Tracer’s face was replaced by a fear. Not the “I’m getting shot at” kind of fear, but a fear mixed with uncertainty. She was worried.
She turned to face Winston, who looked at her with a similar expression of uncertainty. Everyone’s eyes fell on him. He was their leader, after all. They look to him for decisions.
“Did we just lose?” Tracer asked.
Winston nodded solemnly. Overwatch had lost, and this loss had cost them everything. Every secret recorded on anything digital was now no longer secret.
Winston tried to collect himself. Make what he could out of this situation. He took a deep breath.
“I suggest that you all go home to your families. If you like, we could take them back to Watchpoint Gibraltar and keep them safe there if we can. Prepare for a long struggle. These next few months are going to be rough.”
Everyone sighed collectively. They all turned around and left. Problems were ahead, and they all knew it. Sombra had unleashed a beast: secrets.
Those secrets would devour each and every one of them. Winston learned a long time ago that one of the most valuable things was information. Controlling information was powerful. Some secrets would help people if revealed. Others would spark chaos.
There were many of those who wished Overwatch to be destroyed. Everyone from the common criminal or angry citizen to the top enemy organizations, such as Talon.
They were never able to reach them before. They didn’t know how. Now they did. Hard times were sure to follow. People would find them. The public might turn on them again, but even if they didn’t, they were still in trouble. Whatever was next, it would almost certainly not be good for Overwatch, or the world, for that matter. They would have to prepare for the worst. All of them would.
————————————
Sombra stood on the outskirts of the city. She squatted and picked up the silver and purple circular device at her feet. The translocator was probably one of the best tools in her arsenal. The the touch of a button on her wrist and she was teleported away to wherever she had put the device. Useful in combat, or other predicaments, to escape quickly.
She could she the data center building from where she was. The entire building glowed purple like a beacon in the night. She chuckled lightly. She had finally done it. She beat Overwatch. As she stood outside the city, she smiled, and said aloud:
“No more secrets.”