Shawn POV
The Underground breathed differently at night. The tunnels never really slept, not with omnics welding, humans hauling crates, my Thorns stringing cables like veins through stone. But there was a rhythm, steady, like a pulse. It almost felt like life. That rhythm cracked the night the leaflets came.
At first, one slipped under a door. Then a dozen, plastered on walls near the barricades. By morning, half of Whitehall was littered with them. Wet, crumpled pages showing Overwatch pay slips, stamped with the lion crest and Adawe's forged signature. All were made out to omnic names. Wages that looked like double what any dockworker, medic, or soldier saw in a month.
"Robots steal your wages."
"Omnics take your jobs."
"Overwatch pays machines more than men."
The words spread faster than we could burn the paper. By evening, the chants started aboveground. We'd braced for something like this. I just thought it would take longer.
"They're not even good forgeries," Spencer muttered, pacing in front of the med station. He shoved one of the slips into my hands, his voice sharp with anger. "Wrong payroll codes, wrong ink weight. They didn't even bother matching fonts. Anyone with half a brain could spot it."
"Half a brain isn't what matters," Sonya said grimly as she stitched a cut on Marco's arm from earlier welding. "What matters is grief. People will believe anything if it promises their pain has a culprit."
Marco winced, then shrugged. "She's right. Facts don't matter when your belly's empty."
Felix, perched on a crate nearby, nodded. "Or when your job's gone and you've got mouths to feed." His tone was low, almost guilty. "I'd believe it, too, if I didn't know better."
I looked at them all. My team. My Thorns. Veterans of the Omnic Crisis. We faced Anubis' relays and his legions. We'd healed countless lives. They'd stared down Bastions and Titans. But they couldn't aim rifles at propaganda. That was Talon's genius. They didn't need to fight us. It was easier for us to fight each other.
The next night, they came.
A hundred at first. Then two. Then more, swelling against the barricades at the tunnel mouth. They carried placards painted in crude strokes: "NO JOBS FOR MACHINES." "HUMAN HANDS FIRST." Someone banged on a drum until it echoed like gunfire in the wet stone.
Chants rolled down the steps like waves crashing against rock.
"Overwatch sells us out!"
"Robots steal our wages!"
"Traitors!"
Security locked shields in a tight line. Riot helmets glared back torchlight. The air stank of gasoline and wet concrete.
My Thorns stood just behind the line. Virginia's jaw was tight as she checked the straps on her med kit. Spencer's rifle was slung but his hands twitched near the grip. Sonya tapped her foot, like she was preparing for a surgery she didn't want to perform. Felix muttered numbers, calming himself. Leslie traced symbols on a wall with chalk making circles, crosses, as if to remind herself that order could be made out of chaos.
They all looked at me. Waiting. They've handled riots before. But this one was different. At leastr back at Vishkar, the rioters were armed. These people were misled, unarmed. Charging at us with mostly words and fists. This wasn't just Overwatch's line. It was mine.
I scanned the crowd, and there they were. Too clean, too still. Talon. One in a gray coat held a camera phone high, catching every flare of anger. Another handed out fresh forged slips like communion. A third whispered into ears, fanning flames with practiced calm as he handed a man some money who immediately began yelling louder.
Not soldiers. Not even fighters. Just poisoners.
The crowd surged forward, pressing against shields. Hands slammed the polyglass. A man with soot-streaked cheeks pushed to the front, waving one of the forged slips. His voice cracked but carried.
"My brother's been out of work a year! You'll pay a machine more in a week than he's earned since the war ended? Tell me why!"
The roar that followed shook the walls.
Before security could shove him back, I stepped past the shields. My boots hit the wet steps with too much echo. The cameras swung toward me, expecting me to act rashly. Good. Let them.
"It's a lie," I said, loud enough to cut. "Those papers are forgeries. The signatures belong to the dead. The stamps are wrong. The codes don't match. They're lies."
The man spat at my boots. His spit mixed with rainwater, gray on stone. "Easy for you to say. You've got rank. You've got pay. What do we have?"
"Loss," I said quietly, and my throat scraped with the word. Then louder: "Loss. Same as you. Homes gone. Jobs gone. Families gone. I fought here, defending your lands just like you. Carried bodies out of here. Human and omnic. Don't think I don't know the weight."
He shook the slip in my face. "Then why should I believe you and not this?"
The crowd roared agreement. Behind them, a Talon operative shouted: "They'll replace you! You'll starve while they rebuild!"
I seized the opening before I lost it.
"Oh, if the slips are true, then then omnics would be getting paid more than even your officials. They'd be loaded. Do you see any walking around with jewelry. Do you see any omnics showing their wads of money in your faces. If those slips were true, Overwatch would go bankrupt."
The chants wavered. Doubt slipped in like smoke.
The woman with the photo, her face wet with rain and grief, stepped forward again. She lifted the picture. Her voice was thin but steady.
"My husband worked thirty years in the factories. Came home with nothing when they shut down. If he were alive, he'd be out of work still. Do you promise me he'd have a place here?"
"Yes," I said, and I hated the certainty in my voice because certainty is for fools. But duty made me say it anyway. "Yes. Not just him. You. Your children. Jobs rebuilding homes, clinics, roads. Wages fair. Not stolen. Not lies."
The woman searched my face like she was carving through it. Then she lowered the photo.
The chants faltered. Some still shouted. Some still spat. But the sharpest edge dulled. Behind them, the Talon operatives stiffened. The one with the phone tried to rally: "They're lying! They'll sell you out!"
But the crowd didn't surge again. Not the same way. Doubt had cracked the momentum, and riots only thrive on certainty. Once hit with truth, it begins to fade. By dawn, the operatives were gone. Melted back into the city. The leaflets would spread again, in other streets, other mouths. But not here tonight.
We were bruised. Smoke still clung to the barricades. But no one was dead. No one fired a shot. My sleeve was stained with liquid that I hoped was rain and not spit. At least they weren't stained with blood.
Adawe's message arrived on my comm, terse but cutting: "You did not swing. That is how peace survives."
I sat on a crate, listening to the Thorns argue about cable runs and triage layout as if the world hadn't nearly cracked open. Sonya muttered about wasted sutures. Spencer rubbed his eyes like he couldn't believe we'd stood down. Felix whispered numbers again, calmer this time.
I believed it. Because if we had swung, Talon would have won.
And peace, so fragile and foolish, would have died before it ever had the chance to grow. London's rain fell steady outside, washing the leaflets into pulp. The tunnels hummed with the sound of welding, of people working side by side.
Peace wasn't born in speeches or signed in chambers. It was born here, in damp stone and tired hands, in refusing to believe the lies meant to break us. Talon had tested us. We hadn't broken. Not yet.
And that, for tonight, was enough.