The tower rose like a scar in the earth. It stood tall, metal fused with ancient Ravager remains, spinning slowly in place. A single vertical slit glowed crimson near its peak, rotating in endless arcs, sweeping across the land like a divine searchlight. Beneath it, cables slithered into the cracked stone, feeding the land's death with every pulse.
Shawn knelt behind a ridge, his team crouched low beside him. The wind had gone still.
"That thing's a beacon," S3bastian said. "A mobile relay tower, likely anchored to Ravager neuro-circuitry. It's not just broadcasting signals."
Virginia stared into the glow. "It's watching."
Spencer adjusted his visor. "Then it sees us already."
As if in answer, the eye stopped turning. It locked onto them. Then the tower screamed.
"INTRUSION CONFIRMED.
BEGIN CLEANSING PROTOCOL."
Eight Anubis dropships pierced the sky, descending like blades.
They released waves of omnic forces: Bastions and Orisa units into concentric rings around the tower. One heavy drop-plate cracked open to reveal a Juggernaut-class unit, its armored legs spearing into the ground, twin cannons charging at its flanks.
The battlefield had been drawn. And if they wanted to get to the tower, they would have to fight through it to get to it.
"Virginia, Dwayne, Steve, Marco, Sonya. Head to the western area, hold there. Watch each other's backs and don 't get overrun. If it gets too dicey, retreat. Everyone else, take the east."
"What about you?" Spencer asked a bit worried about their current situation.
"I'm going front and center. I'll draw the fire while trying to take as many out as I can."
"Since no one asked me what I'll be doing, I guess I'll check out this kebab place I heard was around here." S3bastion complained.
"You. You can go crazy." Shawn said as he jumped over the ridge, charging towards the omnic enemy in front of them.
"I like crazy." S3bastian said as he followed suit.
The omnics surged forward like a wave. The dropships supplied the tide. However, Shawn remained calm. Bastions transfigured, raining bullets towards him. Using his metal arm, he easily deflected hundreds of bullets, aiming for them to strike the enemy. Once he closed the distance, he began his work of tear through their ranks, hoping to lessen their numbers.
The tower watched his fight unmoved. As it was built by the remains of Ravagers, it was essentially one itself. It studied Shawn's movements and understood that he was no easy target to take down. But it did come up with a strategy. It knew they had the numbers, so all it had to do was distract him and focus on the others with him.
The omnics followed the towers orders, as Bastion units began to walk past Shawn uncaringly. Shawn took notice of them but couldn't turn back to deal with them. He put his trust in his team, along with S3bastian. They've been in worse situations than this.
Omnics converged on the western area, focusing fire towards the rest of his team. They indeed felt the pressure of a thousand omnics focusing them. Slowly they retreated until they found themselves with their backs against the mountain ridge.
"We can't hold this position," Sonya yelled through their comms. "We need cover!"
"No," Shawn said. "We need that tower gone. It's feeding real-time targeting data to everything out here."
"I can reach the base, but we don't really have much in terms of..." S3bastian started but stopped as Leslie yelped as she took a bullet beside him. Catching her, both of them grasped her side as the blood seeped through her uniform.
Their eyes met, and he could see the fear in them. Fear that this was their last mission. That they wouldn't return and die out in the middle of nowhere and be forgotten. He thought back to Shawn explaining that everyone and everything should be allowed to make a choice. The free will to do what mattered most to them.
"Never mind, I worked up a plan." S3bastian says as he administers a Blackline stim to Leslie who breathes a sigh of relief.
"What do you need?" Shawn grunts as he cuts down another Bastion.
"You guys to keep the sky from falling on me, then get out of the area, I'll handle the rest."
Shawn paused, not missing the cryptic tone in S3bastian's voice. Just as he goes to call him out on it, a Bastion's metal fist punches Shawn in the face. Cutting that Bastion down angrily and emptying the rest of his clip into it, he issues orders.
"Alright, Thorns! Group up, we make a path!"
The team advanced through a hailstorm of gunfire.
Marco and Felix took the flanks, grenades bursting in arcs that tore into Bastion formations. Spencer and Leslie provided sniper overwatch from the ridge, disrupting Orisa shields. Virginia moved with fluid aggression, slicing down two Bastions in close quarters with her modified vibro-blade.
Shawn surged forward, deflecting plasma shots with his katana, sparks dancing off his blade as he cleared a path. S3bastian darted through the chaos, his movements surgical. One Bastion leveled a turret at him, but it was too slow. S3bastian vaulted over it, fired two precision plasma bursts into its core, and kept running.
S3bastian reached the relay base. The eye rotated rapidly now, projecting beams of red light across the battlefield.
"YOU CANNOT UNMAKE THE SIGHT.
ALL YOUR STRUGGLES—STATISTICS.
ALL YOUR LOSSES—FUEL."
He planted the core detonator beneath the Ravager's exposed spinal feed, where pulsing red veins glowed through torn metal.
"Charge primed," he whispered. "Manual detonation. Ten-second timer."
He paused just for a second. He stared up at the eye. It wasn't just glowing, it was glaring. And that was when something changed.
"…not today," he muttered.
He slammed the core.
S3bastian activated his boosters and launched backward, sliding down a slope of shattered Ravager plating. The tower began to spark, the energy beam within its eye turning unstable. He landed hard and rolled, flames chasing him down the incline.
Then.....
BOOM.
The tower exploded from within, red light rupturing through the seams. The relay eye blew outward in a disk of molten glass. Its spinal conduit shattered in a chain reaction, tearing the monolith apart in three clean vertical sections.
The pulse beacon shut off. Every omnic in the basin froze. Then collapsed.
Shawn reached the ridge just in time to see the tower fall.
He spotted S3bastian standing in the crater's shadow, smoke trailing off his shoulders. His coat was scorched. One arm sparked. But he was intact.
"Glad you changed your mind." Shawn asked, breathing hard as he took him into a hug.
"I calculated that being a martyr was dramatically overrated," S3bastian replied, pushing on Shawn out of the hug.
Felix walked up, stunned. "That thing really went down."
"Relay signal is gone," Spencer confirmed. "Comms are clean again."
Virginia looked to the sky. "Then that's two towers down."
Shawn stared at the crater.
"And one more step closer to the heart."