Medellín – Outskirts, Burn Zone Perimeter
The sky wasn't black. It was smeared, as if someone had taken a charcoal stick and dragged it across the stars. Ash rained like snow, silent and clinging, turning Overwatch armor gray and clogging rifle mechanisms. The forest had already died here. Trees stood like skeletons. The underbrush crackled with ember veins. And through it all, came the screaming.
Shawn hit the ground first, boots crunching against scorched earth. The heat curled around him like a predator. Even through the rebreather, each inhale was thick with carbon and dread. The rest of the team landed in sequence, spreading out in a practiced diamond formation. S3bastian landed last, plasma cannon humming to life with a deep thrum that shook nearby branches.
"City's ten klicks that way," Virginia reported, pointing toward flickering lights barely visible through the haze. "But there's movement, three hundred meters out. Not friendly."
"Omnics?" Felix asked.
Shawn's eyes narrowed. "If they're not on fire, they're enemies. Move."
They found the first survivors huddled beneath a collapsed aqueduct, coughing and bloodied. Three civilians and a militia soldier barely older than twenty. His legs were gone. So was most of his face.
" Spencer, Sonya, Marco, triage," Shawn ordered without thinking.
Spencer knelt beside the soldier and placed a hand to his chest. His fingers sparked faintly with bioelectric current, subtle and steady. The soldier stopped twitching. His ragged breaths slowed.
"He's too far gone," Marco muttered.
"No one's gone until I say so," Shawn said. He crouched, pressed his palm against the soldier's sternum, and pushed.
Pain knifed through Shawn's body. The burns transferred, molten agony crawling up his arms, then his legs. He realized quickly that maybe he shouldn't have attempted this. His limit was surpassed back in the Middle East, and he never really fully recovered from abusing it. Especially not with someone missing limbs in a state like this. He gritted his teeth and kept going.
The soldier gasped and then breathed. The others watched in awed silence. The boy would live. Shawn? He staggered back against a charred log, limbs shaking violently.
"You shouldn't keep doing this," Virginia warned.
"I'll stop when they stop dying."
Command Relay Outpost
They arrived at a forward outpost; little more than a crumbling fire station fortified with sandbags and water barrels. Dozens of wounded lay in rows on the pavement. Three medics remained, desperately overwhelmed.
"Thank god," one of them rasped. "You're Rose."
Shawn knelt by a woman curled on a slab of concrete; her entire body wrapped in melted bandages and raw skin. She didn't scream. She couldn't.
"She was pulled from a fuel truck explosion," the medic said quietly. "Shock's setting in. We don't think she'll make it."
Shawn looked at her for three seconds. Then placed his hand over her heart.
"Rose, don't..." Virginia started. Too late.
The moment Vital Synch engaged, his lungs seized. His nerves screamed. The burns didn't just appear, they crawled, as if fire itself were trying to erupt from his skin. His breath left him. His vision tunneled. He felt melted. Shawn dropped to his knees, vomiting bile and blood onto the pavement.
" Shawn!" Spencer grabbed him, but couldn't do anything more.
The woman beside them once burned, and disfigured, shuddered. Her eyes fluttered open. She whispered, "Thank you."
Shawn curled on the ground, trembling, clothes sticking to his seared chest as he heaved trying to catch his breath." It's different," he gasped. "Burns… they stay. They linger. Like they're still happening."
He forced himself to his feet, shaking violently." I'll remember that next time," he said, eyes glazed but alive.
No one said a word.
Eastern Corridor
The team advanced again. Now they weren't just fighting fire. They were fighting ambushes.
Omnic patrols emerged from the ash like phantoms with steel glowing orange from heat, optics scanning and clicking. Short-range burners. Suppression bots with heat-resistant shields. Scavenger units that dragged bodies back into the trees. Shawn cut through one with his blade, sparks flying as his katana carved its central processor.
"Felix, left!" A burst of gunfire answered. Another bot dropped.
" Virginia, cover the wounded—S3bastian—"
"Already vaporizing them!" the omnic butler sang, releasing a charged blast that disintegrated a trio of attackers. "Do keep up, sir!"
Smoke devoured their surroundings. Shawn couldn't see past five feet now. But his team kept moving. Kept saving. Kept fighting.
They finally reached the edge of the city. The firebreaks held, barely. Concrete walls and diverted rivers created a tenuous line of defense. But the omnics were testing it now. Dozens of incendiary units pressed forward, launching thermal grenades over the barrier.
Civilians still trapped inside screamed for help.
Reyes' voice came through on comms, barely audible over static. "Medellín can't hold much longer. We need a push from inside. Now."
Shawn looked at his team. Exhausted. Burned. Coughing through blackened masks.
"Leslie, Spencer, Marco—take the north sector. Felix, Virginia, Sonya—go west. Extract anyone who can't walk."
"What about you?" Dwayne asked.
Shawn slid his mask back on. "I'll go where the fire's thickest."
"And me?" S3bastian asked." You're with me. We're going straight through." The team split. No hesitation. Shawn ran.
Jungle Interior
The flames parted for only one reason, S3bastian's plasma cannon.
Every few minutes, Shawn would dive into the smoke, pull someone out, and keep moving. His coat burned. His body shook. But the Blackline kept him upright, and his will kept him sane.
They reached a collapsed monorail station, now a furnace of twisted steel. Trapped beneath it a group of thirty, most of them children.
"Structural instability," S3bastian warned. "We have minutes."
"Then we don't waste seconds," Shawn growled. He dove in. Many of them were horribly burned. Four of the worst were barely conscious, faces coated in soot and melted skin.
One of them, a boy no older than twelve, looked right at him with blistered eyes and whispered, "Help... please…"
Shawn looked around. No other medics in range. No time for proper evac. It was a miracle they were even alive with this level of burns. He dropped to his knees beside the boy. He made a hard choice. The only real choice he had.
"Vital Synch engaging."
It hit him like napalm. Flesh scorched. Nerves detonated. His throat locked up, body screaming to shut down. But he moved on to the next.
And the next.
And the last.
By the end, his skin steamed through the suit. His eyes bled. His entire chest was covered in second-degree scarring.
"That's enough!" S3bastian shouted. "Stop! You're done!"
Shawn turned toward him, S3bastians words being lost on him as they and the world distorted. Then collapsed straight to the ground.
Unmoving.