Shawn's POV:
I had accepted Adawe's punishment too easily.
The words had fallen from my lips, 'Yes, ma'am', with the ease of surrender, as though discipline could be worn like a cloak. I thought humility would protect me. I thought I could bow my head and weather the storm. But humility was only the opening move.
The storm came in the form of paper. Mountains of it.
Every morning when I entered her office, there was another stack waiting on my desk. Reports from relief convoys. Supply requisitions from fractured governments. Accusations traded between nations like knives hidden in velvet.
"Read," Adawe ordered on the first day, her tone flat, almost bored. "Summarize. Condense. No errors. If I am misinformed, people starve."
I thought it was busywork. A way to humiliate me, keep me chained to the desk. But after the first hundred pages, I realized this was her battlefield. It wasn't fire and blood. It was words. Numbers. Tiny shifts in phrasing that could mean life or death. A wrong decimal in a food allocation report meant a convoy too small. A missed casualty figure meant another region demanding aid they didn't need.
I found myself sweating, not from combat, but from the realization of how easy it would be to ruin lives with the stroke of a pen. Humility hadn't prepared me for this.
By the end of the first week, Adawe let me shadow her into Council sessions.
"Listen," she warned, her voice like steel drawn thin. "Only listen. You do not speak. Not one word."
I obeyed.
The chamber was grand, but the grandeur reeked of desperation. Nations seated around the holo-table, maps glowing across their faces. At first it seemed orderly, delegates addressing each other, citing numbers, requesting aid.
But then the lies started. I learned to recognize them quickly as it was a trick that was common among. Exaggerated figures of famine, padded casualty reports, false claims of omnic incursions. Nations pleading poverty when their convoys sat full. Leaders painting their wounds bloodier than they were, all to wring more resources from Overwatch's hands.
A lot of times, the lies were audacious, and I wanted to shout. I really had to fight the urge to call them out. To slam my fist on the table, demand proof, demand honesty. But Adawe's words bound me: Listen. Only listen.
So I listened. And I learned.
I learned how easily desperation warped into manipulation. How every nation wore tragedy like armor, and how truth drowned beneath the politics of survival.
By the third session, I realized something colder: Adawe knew they were lying. She let them. She let their words spin out like rope, only to cut them at the opportune moment with precise counter-facts. Her reports were detailed. She knew things I never knew she did. Which meant she knew when I lied. Knew when I did the very thing they tried on her. She was running this game before I knew I was a player. Her silence was a weapon sharper than any blade I'd held.
When the second week began, Adawe shifted me from observation to teaching.
"The medics look to you," she said. "They need guidance. But not soldiers' guidance. Teach them to heal."
I thought that would be easier.
The training pits smelled of antiseptic and sweat, the walls still bearing scorch marks from the war games we once ran there. My Thorns greeted me with the old loyalty, Spencer's crooked grin, Virginia's steady gaze, Sonya's folded arms.
But alongside them were fresh faces. Recruits. Wide-eyed. Young. They hadn't lived the war as we had. Their boots weren't caked with ash. I began with what I knew.
"Casualty evac," I barked, falling back into rhythm. "You run into fire, you drag them out, you patch on the move. Bring them to the med area. Again!"
They obeyed. They moved well. Almost too well. Like echoes of the war that had just ended.
By the third drill, sweat dripped down their brows, breaths came ragged. I felt pride flicker in my chest. Yes, they were learning. Yes, they were becoming Thorns.
Then a hand rose.
He was young, maybe nineteen. A shaved head, eyes that didn't flinch.
"Sir," he said, voice even.
"Speak."
He swallowed once, but his words didn't waver. "What good is this?"
The room froze. Spencer glanced at me like he expected an explosion.
The recruit pressed on. "The war's over. Anubis is gone. We're not dragging soldiers from burning fortresses anymore. What good is running into gunfire if the next enemy doesn't fight us that way?"
The silence thickened.
I opened my mouth to shut him down. But Adawe was teaching me to exercise patience. So instead, I asked, "And what way do you think they'll fight?"
His answer was quiet, but sharp. "The omnics lost the war, sir. Besides the occasional skirmish in isolated areas, there is no enemy right now."
The other recruits looked at me, his words ringing truth that hit like a blade to the gut. However, I couldn't tell them the truth. There's a secret organization that is quietly running the world from the shadows. That's the enemy were facing.
That night, I sat alone in my quarters, lamplight flickering across scattered reports.
The recruit's words echoed in the silence. There is no enemy right now.
I thought back to Cairo's ruins, children coughing in the dust, not soldiers falling to plasma fire. I thought of Amman, where burns festered not because we lacked courage, but because we lacked clean bandages.
Talon wouldn't fight us with armies. They'd bleed us with subtler knives. Diseases. Shortages. Lies. The Thorns were built for warzones. But the next war wouldn't look like a warzone at all. For the first time since my suspension began, I felt fear. Not for myself, but for my medics. For what I'd trained them to be, and what they would fail to be if I didn't change.
The next morning, I walked into Adawe's office with the weight of the thought still pressing my chest.
She didn't turn from her screens when she spoke. "You've read the Bern report?"
"Yes."
"Then summarize."
I hesitated. "I need to say something first."
Her tone sharpened. "Careful, Rose."
I took a breath anyway. "The Thorns won't be enough. Not like we are now. We're still training for war. But Talon won't fight us that way. They'll strike through disease, through sabotage, through panic. And if we don't adapt, we'll be chasing ghosts with the wrong tools."
Silence.
I expected scorn, maybe anger. But Adawe only turned, her eyes narrowing with interest. "And what do you propose?"
The words tumbled out. "We rebuild the Thorns as more than battlefield medics. A corps trained for crisis medicine. For disease prevention. For infrastructure sabotage. Not just running into fire, but stopping the smoke from rising in the first place."
Adawe studied me for a long time. Longer than any Council session. Finally, she said:
"Good."
And turned back to her screens. The next drills looked different.
We still ran evac formations, because war wasn't gone, not truly. But between those, I added new lessons. How to sterilize wounds with minimal supplies. How to diagnose fever clusters. How to calm panicked civilians when sabotage cut their water.
At first, the original Thorns resisted. Spencer groaned about becoming hospital clerks. Virginia muttered that she was used to running into the fire.
But the recruits leaned in. The young ones. The ones who hadn't seen war, but had seen what came after. Their focus bled into the veterans. Slowly, reluctantly, the old Thorns began to adapt. And I realized I was learning, too. Learning humility not just at a desk, but in the dirt of the pits. Learning to rebuild us not as soldiers, but as something sharper, quieter, more adaptable.
By the fourth week, I understood.
Adawe's punishment hadn't been chains. It had been a mirror. She had forced me to sit in silence until I saw what I had missed, that war was not just fire, but smoke. Not just screams, but whispers. I had thought I accepted the punishment too easily. But the truth was I hadn't accepted it at all. Not until now.
And for the first time, I didn't just feel humbled. I felt prepared. The next war would not be fought in open battle. It would be fought in lies, in shortages, in disease. And the Thorns would be ready.